title: Italian colonial psychiatry: outlines of a discipline, and practical achievements in Libya and the Horn of Africa.
abstract: This article describes the establishment of psychiatry in Italy's former colonies during the period 1906-43, in terms of the clinical and institutional mechanisms, the underlying theories and the main individuals involved. 'Colonial psychiatry' (variously called 'ethnographic', 'comparative' or 'racial' psychiatry) - the object of which was both to care for mentally afflicted colonists and local people and also to understand and make sense of their pathologies - received most attention in colonial Libya, starting in the first months of the Italian occupation (1911-12) and then taking institutional form in the 1930s; in the colonies of what was known as 'Italian East Africa', on the other hand, less was said about psychiatric care, and practical achievements were correspondingly limited.
authors.affiliation: Université de Strasbourg, France marianna.scarfone@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Marianna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Scarfone
mesh_terms: D000349:Africa; D018595:Colonialism / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008002:Libya; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000266:history*
keywords: Africa; Angelo Bravi; Libya; colonial psychiatry; ethnopsychiatry