A Tension Spot between the Center and the Periphery? Assisting Persons with Mental Disorders in the Rhône Département (1918–1940)

Numerous recent reports have pointed to regional differences concerning the provision of psychiatric care. These refer back to legacies which this paper seeks to depict through a study of assistance policies to indigent people suffering from mental disorders in the Rhône department between the two world wars. In a context marked by the emergence of new priorities in terms of assistance, general councilors, then confronted with the rapid increase in the number of internments, objected to providing financially for the upkeep of this category of persons—who they considered a “social waste”—and were opposed to the modernization of psychiatry encouraged by a state which itself refused to provide for it financially.