Preliminary Programme

Previous research on the 1918 influenza pandemic has demonstrated differential outcomes among populations based on gender, socioeconomic status, age, and other factors. However, little research on past pandemics has explored disability as a risk factor for morbidity or mortality outcomes. Yet, due to potential synergistic interactions between disability and disease and to social challenges including institutionalization or barriers to health care, people with disabilities are at increased risk during health emergencies. In this paper, we draw on rich historical data, including comparative data from Norway and Sweden, to examine the experiences of people with disabilities during the pandemic. For example, details of the introduction of disease and its subsequent spread through institutions such as asylums and special schools are described. Analyses also suggest that patients in asylums were more likely to die than staff members. The findings demonstrate the need for equitable and effective public health preparedness plans and how evidence from historical analyses can support the development of such policies. (Show less)

The 1970s in the Psychiatry were a period of crisis and transformation: from the change of therapeutic regimes, over the growing attention to - and control over psychiatric practices by governmental and non-governmental players and to the rise of Antipsychiatry. One of the key conflicts of the decade revolved around the accusation of Soviet psychiatrists´ abuse of their medical authority for political purposes. The psychiatric community worldwide had to critically assess, define and re-define their nosological, ethical, and epistemic standpoints. Soviet psychiatrists, in their turn, saw themselves confronted with a perceived unjustified intrusion into their doings, an act of tutelage within a larger fight for ideological supremacy in the Cold War.
In my talk I will analyze the modes of negotiating scientific authority, the in- or outsider status within the psychiatric – and, on a more general scale, international scientific community of the 1970s. I am to explore the strategies of academic and public legitimation, the role of public media and NGO´s in challenging, negotiating, and shaping the medical and academic terrain of the era. I will also argue how and why the Soviet part performed – or rather imitated its “inside-ness” even being effectively excluded from the major international platforms. (Show less)