Mental health represents one of the most resonant questions of today. Pandemic which we are living and the global and local responses to infectiousness of the virus reactualized the importance of „crisis of mental health“ first proclaimed in the 90s but never resolved. In this lecture, the appearance of „mental health“ as one of the indicators of the success of national projects is taken as a vehicle for terms, concepts and procedures that require local translations. These terms, concepts, and procedures are part of the „transitional“ recipe that is indiscriminately being offered to post-socialist countries on their path to the free market and benefits of capitalism. Ethnographic fragments of Zadar and Psychiatric hospital of Ugljan serve as an entrance into the questions of transition and its effects on the health and social care systems in Croatia.

Jelena Kupsjak is a postdoc at the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology at the University of Zadar, Croatia where she teaches Introduction to ethnology and cultural anthropology, Medical anthropology and Economic anthropology. She is a coeditor of Politički leksikon (politicki-leksikon.com). Her research interests are in social and health care policy, care and precarity.