Blame George Harrison: Drug Use and Psychiatry in Communist Yugoslavia

In 2009, reporters from a Serbian news magazine posted a video from the Crna Reka monastery in the south of Serbia. Shot within a room adorned with Orthodox icons, the video showed a young drug addict being repeatedly beaten with a shovel and brutally punched in the face by a man wearing brass knuckles, while another “therapist” orders the young man to stay in place. The release of further videos revealed that such “treatment” was a typical …