LA ADMINISTRACIÓN DE LA SALUD MENTAL EN CALI: CAMBIO INSTITUCIONAL EN EL HOSPITAL PSIQUIÁTRICO SAN ISIDRO 1956-1970

Abstract

The construction of a psychiatric modern hospital in the Department of Valle del Cauca (Colombia) between 1956 and 1961 implied important transfor-mations in the organizational field and in the system of beliefs on the mental health in the region. At the organizational level, the Board of directors of the Asylum managed to agglutinate efforts of private and public institutions in favor of the improvement of the attention of the mental patients. Likewise, with the support of the Department of Psychiatry of the Universidad del Valle, it changed the medical practice on the mental illness and did the new hospital a space with an organizational modern structure, with all the criteria and requirements for the specialists’ formation in psychiatry. In regard to the system of beliefs, new policies implemented on the mental health and the discovery of new treatments for dementia operated profound changes in the ways of understanding the disease. Following a line of historiographical research that used as a source the administrative file of the Hospital and medical histories, the present work describes the process of institutional change that took place in the asylum in its transition process of asylum to Psychiatric Hospital in Cali between 1956 and 1960

Keywords

• belief system
• hospital
• institutional change
• organizational field
• psychiatry