Tools and therapy in psychiatric treatments

extracts from the historical archives of the psychiatric hospital of Girifalco

Abstract

Historical archives of former psychiatric hospitals are rich sources of information and different research approaches have been applied over the years to look into their clinical records. This work aims to investigate the terminology used for describing care treatments and instruments in a sample of clinical records of the end of the nineteenth century coming from the psychiatric hospital of Girifalco, a small village in the backcountry of Calabria, Italy. This work is part of the project ALPHA (eAsy inteLligent service Platform for Healthy Ageing), which has, among other objectives, the aim of digitizing a consistent part of the historical archive of the former psychiatric hospital of Girifalco in order to use clinical data for further investigations, especially focused on dementia correlated diseases. Sentences reported from the analyzed sample of clinical records offer a slice of the daily practice of medical treatments and instruments used in the mental institution.