Abstract

GRUEL SANDEZ, Víctor Manuel. Tanks, Drugs, and Homelessness. The Need of Mental Health in Tijuana, 1960-1995. Secuencia [online]. 2023, n.117, e2151.  Epub Aug 10, 2023. ISSN 2395-8464.  https://doi.org/10.18234/secuencia.v0i117.2151.

This article seeks to explain the enormous need for the authorities and inhabitants of Tijuana to have mental health professionals and institutions. The necessary precondition of these services was that psychiatrists and non-psychiatrists faced a problem involving the dynamics of the city: the fact that criminals, migrants, and homeless people roamed the streets. This posed a risk to public morality due to the mental illnesses suffered by some of these people in the historical context of the “war on drugs”. This article will therefore explore the practices of confinement at institutions ranging from a public jail to the first municipal psychiatric hospital. One of its strengths is that it revisits specific sources on the history of mental health in the second half of the 20th century, particularly in a border area such as Tijuana.

Keywords : mental health; US-Mexico border; psychiatry; Tijuana; institutional history.