Abstract
The main aim of this article is to place the ongoing mental health care reform in the Czech Republic within a broader historical framework of the development of psychiatry in Europe after 1945. The article focuses on a description of historical events which shaped current approaches to mental health and influenced the Czech psychiatric reform.
The article is divided into three main parts: the establishment of therapeutic communities after WWII, the formation of radical anti-psychiatric movements in the 1960s and 1970s and the beginning of deinstitutionalisation supported by the introduction of psychopharmacological treatment. The text examines primarily the development of psychiatry in Europe; however, some parts also describe the experience of Czechoslovakian psychiatrists with the process of deinstitutionalization.