Objectified, Infantilised, Bestial: The Institutionalisation of Muslim Psychiatric Patients in 20th Century Colonial Algeria

With the creation of colonial psychiatric institutions on North African soil, rules for two separate admission processes were established. In colonial Algeria, “administrative placements” saw, in most cases, Muslim men and women institutionalised after being arrested by the police for public order offences and seen by a judge. “Voluntary placements” of Muslim patients, on the other hand, were described by French psychiatrists as being initiated by formal complaints by family members or neighbours to local magistrates. The goal of these “voluntary placements” seems to not necessarily have been the treatment of mental health issues but protecting those closest to the patients from violence through internment. Both forms of placements led to the disproportional institutionalisation of violent or marginalised Muslim Algerian men, with descriptions of their institutionalisation focusing more on the needs of the colonial society – for safety and order – than on the medical requirements of the patients themselves.

Both of these means of admission involved a local French doctor if a psychiatric issue was suspected, in which case the patients were admitted to a hospital or psychiatric institution, in order to be assessed properly by a psychiatrist. Once within the colonial machine, consent by either the family or the patients themselves was, when it came to Muslim patients, only required in exceptional cases, with often invasive treatments being imposed upon them purely on the assessment of psychiatric experts. A lack of consideration of these patients as full human beings – different from the treatment of French patients in the same institutions – is constant in reports, case studies and theories by French colonial psychiatrists. This paper presents an overview of different layers of dehumanisation – as objects, children or beasts – in descriptions of admissions and treatments of Muslim patients in the first half of the 20^th century.