Dear colleagues,

This year, hospital psychiatry in Serbia, being one of the oldest in the region, celebrates its 150th anniversary. Due to century and a half of our historical experience in the development and understanding of psychiatry – the science of mental illness, we are looking forward to organizing the first congress of the Serbian hospital psychiatry.

The Serbian hospital psychiatry officially began in Belgrade on 3 March 1861 when Prince Mihajlo Obrenovic passed the law on "Establishing of a Home for the 'got out of their minds'". The law was promulgated by the Assembly (Soviet State No. 415,) and it contained 37 articles. Article 9 provided that: "only persons 'got out of their mind' of every profession, paralysis and epilepsy, both male and female, both adults and children will be admitted to and treated in this institute".

It was not until 1865 when Wilhelm Griesinger from Medical School in Berlin was appointed full time professor of neurology and psychiatry (psychiatry for the first time in Europe), that psychiatry became a separate medical discipline of undergraduate medical studies.

The first law on health care in Serbia was passed on 30 March 1881 and it specifically regulated the approach to mentally ill persons, as well as their treatment. The institution for the 'got out of their minds' was renamed the Hospital for Mental Illness. Today's Special Hospital for Mental Disorders "Dr. Laza Lazarević" in Belgrade institutionally and topographically inherited those first psychiatric hospitals in Serbia.

Psychiatry of the 21st century is definitely an area of scientific medicine equal to other specialized medical branches. The fact is that certain solutions and approaches to hospital treatment of mental patients have not substantially altered compared to the European tradition in the 19th century.

By organizing this scientific and professional gathering, we are choosing topics focused on debates on urgent psychiatry today and involuntary hospitalization of mental patients in order to provide treatments under statutory involuntary commitment laws. Still today, jurisdictions require psychiatrists to employ their medical knowledge in function of undertaking various actions towards mentally ill because their behavior differs from desirable conduct.

Thus conceptualized, the Congress on Hospital Psychiatry may seem too ambitious, but your participation, experience and sharing your research findings will contribute to psychiatry and to the quality of life of psychiatric patients.

Welcome to Belgrade!