Hospitalization is fundamental in the treatment of severe psychiatric disorders, at present and in the past. The Psychiatric Hospital “Ntra. Sra. Del Pilar de Zaragoza”, established in 1425, is one of the most ancient hospitals and with longest history of the country, one of the first centers to start considering as demented persons as another sick patient. This paper describes the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of the patients admitted to the psychiatric hospital between 1912 and 1915.

We developed a descriptive research, using secondary information sources (clinical histories) of patients hospitalized between 1912 and 1915. For data analysis was used software SPSS 10.

We reviewed 110 files and the most common diagnoses were senile dementia and manic-depressive psychosis. The mean of age was 42 years, and the predominant marital status was the single status (47%). We documented that in more than 60% of the cases, the precedence of the patients was from rural zone. El 75% of the patients had remained hospitalized during several years until their death. Only the 10% were discharged for improvement.

It is important to understand the socio-economic variables of the female patients from a century ago to be aware of the evolution of psychiatry and psychiatric treatment and consequently of the profile of current patients.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.