Curar y custodiar. La cronicidad en el Manicomio La Castañeda, Ciudad de México, 1910-1968

Abstract

The article questions the binomial that associates the chronicity and incurability of mental illness with the custodialism of the asylum through a case study, Asylum La Castaneda in Mexico, from 1910 to 1968. We contrast the discourses about the cure and chronicity constructed by Mexican psychiatrists and the statistical trends of patients admitted: new admissions, readmissions, discharges, length of stay, and diagnoses in the light of new treatments. We concluded that according to the doctors, the asylum therapeutic function was severely affected by chronicity and overpopulation, but according to statistics, 80% of the patients had only one admission with a 15-month hospitalization and the long-term confinement rates of readmissions did not impact statistically; two-thirds of the patients left the asylum, and since the 1950s in the context of new therapeutics.