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Review
. 2021 Feb;18(1):5-8.
doi: 10.1192/bji.2020.22.

Psychiatry in the Middle East: the rebirth of lunatic asylums?

Joelle M Abi-Rached  1
Affiliations
Review

Psychiatry in the Middle East: the rebirth of lunatic asylums?

Joelle M Abi-Rached. BJPsych Int. 2021 Feb.

Abstract

This article briefly assesses the historical trajectory of psychiatric institutions in the Middle East. It underlines a key observation: the persistence and expansion of psychiatric institutionalisation, specifically in the Arab world. In contrast to the deinstitutionalisation that eventually closed large psychiatric hospitals in the 1960s and 1970s, notably in Europe and North America, psychiatric hospitals have continued to grow in size in the Arab world. This absence of deinstitutionalisation marks a major departure from how psychiatry developed in the West, which is worth reflecting on if we are to understand the current crumbling infrastructure of in-patient psychiatric facilities in the Arab region.

Keywords: History of psychiatry; anthropology; economics; low- and middle-income countries; transcultural psychiatry.

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Conflict of interest statement

None.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Proportion of psychiatric beds in mental hospitals in the MENA region and globally, based on data from the WHO's Mental Health Atlases for 2011 and 2017. The data for Libya and Sudan are not reliable and are therefore not included. HI, high-income; MI, middle-income; LI, low-income; MENA, Middle East and North Africa.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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