Outpatient Clinics, Visiting Nurses and Propaganda: Spaces, Actors and Tools of Mental Hygiene in Interwar Italy

Abstract

Summary In interwar Italy, the mental hygiene movement enacted a series of measures in order to control, prevent and contain psychiatric diseases. Developing as a pillar of social medicine, mental hygiene represented a challenging outlook for the psychiatric field, as far as it filled a gap in existing assistance, providing outpatient facilities and avoiding the pitfalls of hospitalisation’s legal constraints. This article analyses the debates aimed at reforming the 1904 law on asylums and the issues at stake, as autonomy from judiciary powers and screening and follow-up in free consultations. It then examines the functioning of dispensaries that responded to these issues, the role of the visiting nurses, as well as that of propaganda deployed by the local sections of The League of Mental Hygiene. Relying on diverse case studies, it aims at reopening the debate on a controversial phase of Italian sociopolitical history through the analysis of psychiatric practices.