Escape from Croatia’s Asylums

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2018

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Unlike many other nations of Europe, thousands of people with mental illness still live in asylums in Croatia. But not in Osijek… In this small city in the far east, dozens of people have moved from mental institutions into regular apartments in the community. One of the asylums has closed completely. The other has become a centre for recovery and respite, with just a few elderly residents. This process is called ‘de-institutionalisation’: a recognition that people with mental health challenges have human rights too, and are not usually dangerous maniacs who need to be locked away. In Croatia, in spite of a government commitment to change the situation for the thousands still residing in institutions, only Osijek has made this radical move. So what’s life like now for those who have been, ‘liberated’? And does life outside an asylum suit everybody?

Photo: Branka Reljan and Drazenko Tevelli outside the abandoned institution of Cepin, where they lived for more than a decade.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Well I might be wrong but I really don't think you'll regret spending the next half hour with
0:03.8	assignment from Croatia from the BBC World Service.
0:07.7	This podcast is about people with serious mental illness, schizophrenia, psychosis, depression.
0:14.0	But it's a heartening story of how their lives have changed.
0:18.0	Anyway, see what you make of it and if you like what you hear,
0:22.0	do rate us with your podcast provider.
0:24.0	Welcome to the asylum.
0:27.0	Okay so in we go. Oh, colder. So we're walking down a long corridor. Just there just empty, dusty rooms. Some of them with hospital beds, lots of cobwebs.
0:45.0	Branca still knows this building like the back of her hand.
0:49.0	When we were waiting for our pills, we would squat here in this corridor and waiting for the nurse to come to give us the pills.
0:56.7	There was no chairs? No chairs, no chairs.
1:01.4	Branko Rayyan is schizophrenic. She used to live in this abandoned asylum when it housed people with mental illness.
1:08.0	In Croatia, thousands of people like her still live in residential institutions. But as we'll hear later in the
1:14.8	program, Branca's world transformed when she moved into an apartment. I'm Linda Presley
1:20.4	and this week's assignment on the BBC World Service explores the impact of a
1:24.4	radical change of policy in one region of Croatia.
1:28.0	Ladislav Lamse, director of social work, locked the doors here in
1:32.0	Chappin in December 2014.
1:34.3	For that occasion we let 100 pigeons, white pigeons from the cages let them free.
1:41.3	It was a celebration. Usually people celebrate when they open the institution
1:47.0	and we make celebration when we close down. So... in his
2:03.3	50s, it was a professional visit to Austria that changed his mind about mental illness.
	...

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