Gender and Expertise in the Mixed Economy of Mental Welfare in Greece The Case of the Society of Social Psychiatry and Mental Health (1980s)

HTML PDF
Published: Apr 15, 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/historein.32108
Keywords:
mental healthcare Greece 20th century welfare psychiatry
Despo Kritsotaki
Academy of Athens/Hellenic Open University
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0694-1365
Abstract

The late 1970s and the 1980s were a time of political and social change in Greece, following the collapse of the seven-year military dictatorship, as well as a time of rupture in mental healthcare: new approaches were being developed, including those implemented by the Society of Social Psychiatry and Mental Health, a voluntary, nonprofit scientific association, founded in 1981 (officially in 1986). This article places the initiatives undertaken by the society within the international context of postwar mental healthcare, and within the national postdictatorship framework. It uses the analytical concept of the “mixed economy of welfare”, demonstrating that the society’s work was based on the synergy between the private and the public. Furthermore, the article discusses how concepts of gender were embedded in and shaped by the work of the society in the 1980s, arguing that the society reproduced the traditional gender hierarchies of the mental health field while reworking the hierarchies within its personnel – psychiatrists and other professionals, experts and nonexperts, and, by extension, to some degree at least, men and women mental healthcare providers.

Article Details
  • Section
  • ARTICLES
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The copyright for articles in this journal is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use (with the exception of the non-granted right to make derivative works) with proper attribution for non-commercial uses (licence Creative Commons 4.0). EKT/NHRF retains the worldwide right to reproduce, display, distribute, and use articles published in Historein in all formats and media, either separately or as part of collective works for the full term of copyright. This includes but is not limited to the right to publish articles in an issue of the Journal, copy and distribute individual reprints of the articles, authorize reproduction of articles in their entirety in another EKT/NHRF publication, and authorize reproduction and distribution of articles or abstracts thereof by means of computerized retrieval systems.
Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
Author Biography
Despo Kritsotaki, Academy of Athens/Hellenic Open University

Despo Kritsotaki is a historian at the Modern Greek History Research Centre of the Academy of Athens and associate teaching fellow in the MA program Public History of the Hellenic Open University. Her research focuses on the history of mental health and mental health sciences in the twentieth century. The last years she has been working on mental health experiences, ideas and practices in postwar Greece, focusing on psychiatric institutions and reforms, professional and lay mental health associations, the family and sexuality. Among her publications are the book “Ψυχική Υγιεινή”, Κοινωνική Πρόνοια και Ψυχιατρική μεταρρύθμιση στη Μεταπολεμική Ελλάδα: Το κέντρο Ψυχικής Υγιεινής και Ερευνών, 1956-1978 [“Mental hygiene”, social welfare and psychiatric reform in postwar Greece: The Centre for Mental Health and Research, 1956-1978] (Athens: Pedio, 2019); “Changing Psychiatry or Changing Society? The Motion for the Rights of the ‘Mentally Ill’ in Greece, 1980-1990,” Journal for the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 76 (2021): 440–61; “New Practices – New Institutions: Group Psychotherapy in Greece and the Open Psychotherapy Centre of Athens, 1960s-1980s,” in Doing Psychiatry: Practices in European Psychiatric Institutions and Beyond, 1945-1990, ed. Gundula Gahlen, Volker Hess, Marianna Scarfone and Henriette Voelker (Manchester University Press, forthcoming).

References
Alexandris, Vasilis. “Οικοτροφείο-ξενώνας: θεωρητική υποδομή και προηγούμενες εμπειρίες” [Boarding home-guesthouse: theoretical infrastructure and previous experiences]. In Επικινδυνότητα και κοινωνική ψυχιατρική: Κείμενα από δύο συμπόσια για την ψυχιατρική [Dangerousness and social psychiatry. Texts from two symposia for psychiatry], edited by Panayotis Sakellaropoulos and Miltos Livaditis, 256–59. Athens: Papazisis, 1990.
Alexandris, Vasilis. “Ψυχιατρική περίθαλψη στο σπίτι του αρρώστου (Ψ.Π.Σ.Α.)” [Psychiatric care in the patient’s home]. Deltio tis Etaireias Spoudon Neoellinikou Politismou kai Genikis Paideias 9 (1986): 27–29.
Ampatzoglou, Grigoris, and Dimitris Ploumpidis. “Το πλαίσιο της φροντίδας των ασθενών: Η κοινοτική ψυχιατρική σήμερα” [The framework of patient care: Community psychiatry today]. Synapsis 16, no. 58 (2020): 38–42.
Avgeridis, Manos, Efi Gazi and Kostis Kornetis. “Εισαγωγή” [Introduction]. In Μεταπολίτευση: Η Ελλάδα στο μεταίχμιο δύο αιώνων [Metapolitefsi: Greece between two centuries], edited by Manos Avgeridis, Efi Gazi and Kostis Kornetis, 9–26. Athens: Themelio, 2015.
Bairaktaris, Kostas. Ψυχική υγεία και κοινωνική παρέμβαση: Εμπειρίες, συστήματα, πολιτικές [Mental health and social intervention. Experiences, systems, policies]. Athens: Enallaktikes Ekdoseis, 1994.
Biquet, Maria. “Η ιστορία της Νίτσας από τη Φωκίδα: Diversity & Inclusion στην πράξη. Ποιος έχει το κουράγιο να ακολουθήσει αυτό το παράδειγμα;” [The story of Nitsa from Fokida: Diversity and inclusion in practice. Who has the courage to follow this example?]. Maria Biquet (blog), 16 March 2021, https://mariabiquet.com/2021/03/16/%ce%b7-%ce%b9%cf%83%cf%84%ce%bf%cf%81%ce%af%ce%b1-%cf%84%ce%b7%cf%82-%ce%bd%ce%af%cf%84%cf%83%ce%b1%cf%82-%ce%b1%cf%80%cf%8c-%cf%84%ce%b7-%cf%86%cf%89%ce%ba%ce%af%ce%b4%ce%b1-diversity-inclusio/.
Davidoff, Leonore. “Gender and the ‘Great Divide’: Public and Private in British Gender History.” Journal of Women’s History 15 (2003): 11–27. https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2003.0020.
Davis, Elizabeth-Ann. Bad Souls: Madness and Responsibility in Modern Greece. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012.
Foot, John. The Man who Closed the Asylums: Franco Basaglia and the Revolution in Mental Health Care. London: Verso, 2015.
Gallant, Thomas. Modern Greece from the War of Independence to the Present. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2016.
Gauchet, Marcel, and Gladys Swain. La pratique de l’esprit humain, l’institution asilaire et la révolution démocratique. Paris: Gallimard, 1980.
Giomi, Fabio, Célia Keren and Morgane Labbé. “Productive Entanglements: The Dynamics of Public–Private Interactions in the History of Social Protection.” In Public and Private Welfare in Modern Europe: Productive Entanglements, edited by Fabio Giomi, Célia Keren and Morgane Labbé, 1–15. London: Taylor & Francis, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003275459-1.
Henckes, Nicolas. “Learning Constraint. Exploring Nurses’ Narratives of Psychiatric Work in the Early Years of French Community Psychiatry.” Culture, Medicine, Psychiatry 38 (2014): 594–617. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-014-9399-2.
Henckes, Nicolas. “Réformer la psychiatrie, organiser les pratiques de secteur: La construction de la psychiatrie de secteur dans ‘l’expérience du treizième arrondissement’.” Paris: Centre de Recherche Médecine, Sciences, Société, Santé, 2005.
Hewitt, Jessie. Institutionalizing Gender. Madness, the Family, and Psychiatric Power in Nineteenth-Century France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020.
Juchet, Jack, and Jacques Postel. “Le ‘surveillant’ Jean-Baptiste Pussin à la Salpêtrière.” Histoire des Sciences Médicales 30 (1996): 189–98.
Kapsambelis, Vassilis. “Psychoanalysis in the Community in France.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 103 (2022): 191–210. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207578.2021.1978294.
Kritsotaki, Despo. “Changing Psychiatry or Changing Society? The Motion for the Rights of the ‘Mentally Ill’ in Greece, 1980–1990.” Journal for the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 76, no. 4 (2021): 440–61. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrab020.
Kritsotaki, Despo. “From ‘Social Aid’ to ‘Social Psychiatry’: Mental Health and Social Welfare in Post-War Greece (1950s–1960s).” Palgrave Communications 4 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0064-1.
Kritsotaki, Despo. “Mental Healthcare in Postwar Greece, c. 1950–1970.” Historical Review/La Revue Historique, 17 (2020): 91–114. https://doi.org/10.12681/hr.27068.
Kritsotaki, Despo. “Η ιστορία της ομαδικής ψυχοθεραπείας στην Ελλάδα (1960–1980)” [The history of group psychotherapy in Greece]. Mnimon 38 (2021): 181–202.
Kritsotaki, Despo. “Ψυχική υγιεινή”, κοινωνική πρόνοια και ψυχιατρική μεταρρύθμιση στη μεταπολεμική Ελλάδα. Το Κέντρο Ψυχικής Υγιεινής και Ερευνών, 1956–1978 [“Mental hygiene”, social welfare and psychiatric reform in postwar Greece. The Centre for Mental Health and Research, 1956–1978]. Athens: Pedio, 2016.
Mitrosyli, Maria. Ψυχιατρείο Λέρου και μεταρρύθμιση. Δημόσιες πολιτικές, ίδρυμα, ασθενείς, κοινότητα [Leros Psychiatric Hospital and reform. Public politics, institution, patients, community]. Athens: Papazisis, 2015.
Papavasileiou, Ioannis, and Panayotis Sakellaropoulos. “Πρόγραμμα κοινωνικής επανένταξης και επαγγελματικής αποκατάστασης ψυχικά πασχόντων: Η πρώτη πραγμάτωση της αποασυλοποίησης” [Programme of social reintegration and professional rehabilitation of the mentally ill: The first realization of deinstitutionalization]. In Θεμέλιο της ψυχιατρικής ο συναισθηματικός δεσμός θεραπευτή-θεραπευόμενου [Foundation of psychiatry the emotional bond of therapist-patient], edited by Panagiota Fitsiou, 117–27. Athens: Papazisis, 2010.
Poulopoulos, Charalampos. “Παρουσίαση αφιερωμένη στο έργο του Π. Σακελλαρόπουλου: Γειτονιά, κοινότητα, κοινωνία” [Presentation on the work of P. Sakellaropoulos: Neighbourhood, community, society]. Eksartiseis 22 (2014). https://doi.org/10.57160/FVTR6420.
Pringle, Yolana. Psychiatry and Decolonisation in Uganda. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Sakellaropoulos, Panayotis. “Διοικητικά και οργανωτικά προβλήματα στη νέα οργάνωση των υπηρεσιών ψυχικής υγείας” [Administrative and organisational problems in the new organization of mental health services]. Πρακτικά 10ου Πανελλήνιου Συνεδρίου Νευρολογίας και Ψυχιατρικής [Proceedings of the 10th National Conference of Neurology and Psychiatry], 1:373–79. Thessaloniki: 1983.
Sakellaropoulos, Panayotis. “Εισαγωγική παρουσίαση” [Introductory presentation]. Tetramina 27 (1984): 1729–31.
Sakellaropoulos, Panayotis. “Θεραπεία περιβάλλοντος και νοσοκομείο ημέρας” [Milieu therapy and day hospital]. Materia Medica Greca 4 (1976): 319–22.
Sakellaropoulos, Panayotis. “Οιδιπόδιος πατέρας και αρχαϊκή μητέρα” [Oedipean father and archaic mother]. In Θεμέλιο της ψυχιατρικής ο συναισθηματικός δεσμός θεραπευτή-θεραπευόμενου [Foundation of psychiatry the emotional bond of therapist-patient], edited by Panagiota Fitsiou, 311–20. Athens: Papazisis, 2010.
Sakellaropoulos, Panayotis. “Ψυχιατρική περίθαλψη στο σπίτι (με την ευκαιρία ενός σεμιναρίου)” [Psychiatric home care (with the opportunity of a seminar]. Materia Medica Greca 3 (1981): 347–60.
Sakellaropoulos, Panayotis, Athina Fragkouli, Nikos Haberis, Xenia Apostola and Maria Aliferi. “Κινητή Μονάδα Ψυχιατρικής Περίθαλψης Υπαίθρου (ΚΜΨΠΥ)” [Mobile Unit of Rural Psychiatric Care]. In Ελληνογαλλικό συμπόσιο κοινωνικής ψυχιατρικής [Greek–French symposium of social psychiatry], 241–45. Athens: Kastaniotis, 1989.
Sakellaropoulos, Panayotis, Georges Papanikolaou and Vassilis Kapsambelis. “A propos de l’hospitalisation à domicile.” Information psychiatrique 60, no. 3 (1984): 237–45.
Sakellaropoulos, Panayotis, Nikos Zikos, Athena Fragkouli and Parsenia Papanikolaou. “Οργάνωση υπηρεσιών ψυχικής υγείας σε αγροτική περιοχή” [Organization of mental health services in a rural area]. In Πρακτικά 10ου Πανελλήνιου Συνεδρίου Νευρολογίας και Ψυχιατρικής [Proceedings of the 10th National Conference of Neurology and Psychiatry], 1:399–405. Thessaloniki: 1983.
Sarantidis, Dimokritos. “Ψυχιατρική κάλυψη του νομού” [Psychiatric coverage of the prefecture]. Deltio tis Etaireias Spoudon Neoellinikou Politismou kai Genikis Paideias 9 (1986): 30–31.
Smith, Matt. “A Fine Balance: Individualism, Society and the Prevention of Mental Illness in the United States, 1945–1968.” Palgrave Communications 2 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2016.24.
Tantalaki, Christodoulia. “Η λειτουργία του οικοτροφείου” [The function of the boarding home]. In Επικινδυνότητα και κοινωνική ψυχιατρική: Κείμενα από δύο συμπόσια για την ψυχιατρική [Dangerousness and social psychiatry: Texts from two symposia for psychiatry], edited by Panayotis Sakellaropoulos and Miltos Livaditis, 260–64. Athens: Papazisis, 1990.
Tataridis, Dimitris, Athina Fragkouli and Panayotis Sakellaropoulos. “Μια οργανωτική ψυχοδυναμική παρουσίαση της φιλοσοφίας της Εταιρίας Κοινωνικής Ψυχιατρικής και Ψυχικής Υγείας” [An organizational psychodynamic presentation of the philosophy of the Society of Social Psychiatry and Mental Health]. In Θεμέλιο της ψυχιατρικής ο συναισθηματικός δεσμός θεραπευτή-θεραπευόμενου [Foundation of psychiatry the emotional bond of therapist-patient], edited by Panagiota Fitsiou, 709–22. Athens: Papazisis, 2010.
Tzivaras, Spiros. “Πρόληψη, ευαισθητοποίηση στο νομό Φωκίδας από την ΚΜΨΠΥ” [Prevention, sensitization in the prefecture of Fokida by the Mobile Unit]. Deltio tis Etaireias Spoudon Neoellinikou Politismou kai Genikis Paideias 9 (1986): 32–35.
Vamvakas, Vasilis, and Panayis Panagiotopoulos. “Η Ελλάδα στη δεκαετία του ’80: Κοινωνικός εκσυγχρονισμός, πολιτικός αρχαϊσμός, πολιτισμικός πλουραλισμός” [Greece in the 1980s: Social modernization, political archaism, cultural pluralism]. In Η Ελλάδα στη δεκαετία του ’80: Κοινωνικό, πολιτικό και πολιτισμικό λεξικό [Greece in the 1980s: Social, political and cultural dictionary], edited by Vasilis Vamvakas and Panayis Panagiotopoulos, xxxi–lxxi. Athens: Epikentro, 2014.
Vandendriessche, Joris, Peter Heyrman and Kim Christiaens, eds. “The Shared Responsibility of Care: Debates over Health and Social Care Provision during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” Special issue, European Journal for the History of Medicine and Health 79, no. 2 (2022).
Voulgaris, Yannis. Η Ελλάδα της Μεταπολίτευσης, 1974–1990 [Postdictatorship Greece, 1974–1990]. Athens: Themelio, 2002.
World Health Organization. Milestones in Health Promotion Statements from Global Conferences. Geneva: WHO, 2009.
World Health Organization. Guideline on Health Policy and System Support to Optimize Community Health Worker Programmes. Geneva: WHO, 2018
Zikos, Nikos. “Εκπαίδευση αδελφών νοσοκόμων στην ψυχιατρική” [Training nurses in psychiatry]. Tetramina 27 (1984): 1819–27.
Zikos, Nikos. “Οργάνωση των υπηρεσιών περίθαλψης στον νομό Φωκίδας” [Organization of care services in the prefecture of Fokida]. Tetramina 27 (1984): 1739–49.
Most read articles by the same author(s)