Preserving Cultural Heritage: Digitizing the Historical Archive of the Former Psychiatric Hospital of Girifalco (South Italy)

Preserving historical archives of former psychiatric hospitals allows to understand the evolution of psychiatric practices and societal attitudes towards mental health problems and institutionalized patients. This paper deals with the historical archive of the former psychiatric hospital of Girifalco in Calabria, Italy, its digitization and creation of support tools for easily consulting it. The work highlights the challenges of dealing with handwritten documents and the transcription process. The digitized records provide valuable research possibilities and shed light on the lives and stories of the patients. In particular, the analysis of the terminology used in the medical records revealed linguistic and historical insights. The digitized records are archived and available online for further research.