‘We give people their humanity back’: inside Croatia’s pioneering mental health centre

It was the oldest asylum in the Balkans. Now the doors are unlocked and patients are living new lives in the community

High walls still surround the oldest asylum in the Balkans, an 18th-century building pocked with the artillery scars of last century’s civil war, but the gates are no longer locked. Handles have been replaced on internal doors and bars removed from windows.

“The jail,” said Darko Kovaoic, a 53-year-old poet with schizophrenia who lives here, “has broken open.”

‘Love was not allowed in the institution. Now we are outside we have our own keys and take a bus. We are happy’

Continue reading... November 19, 2017 at 05:34AM