The book portrays how mental illness was diagnosed, interpreted, and experienced in the Croatian-Serbian region from 1870 to 1950. This study explores various aspects of mental health, placing them in a cultural, institutional, and social context, providing a deeper insight into the history of mental health in that region. Through the analysis of cultural factors, institutional frameworks, social factors, and particularly the impact of wars, it helps to better understand how mental disorders were perceived and treated during that time period in the Croatian-Serbian region. According to the research of Hajke Karge, medical reports, primarily focused on war veterans, indicate that patients in the region were mostly classified as schizophrenic, less frequently as neurotic, nervous, or hysterical, which contrasts with the situation in the German, Russian-Soviet, and American regions. In this sense, the region examined in the book during the mentioned period can be characterized as schizophrenic.

Heike Karge is a social historian of Southeastern Europe. Since September 2023, she has been a professor of history and anthropology of Southeastern Europe at the University of Graz, Austria. Her research focuses on the cultural and social history of Southeastern and Eastern Europe, particularly on the cultural and social history of medicine and psychiatry, war, violence, and memory, transitional justice, legal anthropology, and interdisciplinary trauma studies.