Children and young people in psychiatric hospitals between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: a survey of papers of the Gian Franco Minguzzi Institution in Bologna

Abstract

Starting from a historical reconstruction of the presence of minors within Italian and European psychiatric hospitals and on the evolution of the methods of treatment and re-education of children and young people with mental and intellectual disabilities between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this article proposes an analysis of the documents kept at the archive of the Gian Franco Minguzzi Institution, with particular reference to those that certify the presence of children and adolescents, up to 15 years old, hospitalized in the Bologna’s asylum over a very long period of time, ranging from 1811 to 1950. Here the peculiar and innovative characteristics of the Bologna’s institution, the diagnoses made there and the trajectories of the minors involved are examined.