4 Feb 2018

Insight: Escape from Croatia's Asylums

From Insight, 8:10 am on 4 February 2018

Up until the first half of last century, those with a mental illness were usually treated in some sort of institution. The system started changing in New Zealand from the 1970s until almost all psychiatric hospitals were closed by the early 1990s.

But that trend hasn't been universal in other countries. In the central European nation of Croatia, nearly 4 thousand people with mental illness still live in asylums.

But the small city of Osijek has bucked the system and  dozens of people have moved from mental institutions into regular apartments

The BBC World Services' Linda Pressly asks what's life like now for those who have been 'liberated'?

(A warning that some accounts of individual's time in these institutions could be distressing for some people.)

Escape from Croatia's Asylums

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