Vladimir Serbsky

Vladimir Petrovich Serbsky (Владимир Петрович Сербский, February 26 1858, Bogorodsk – April 18 1917, Moscow) was one of the founders of the forensic psychiatry in Russia. An author of The Forensic Psychopathology, Serbskiy thought delinquency to have no congenital diatheses, considering it to be caused by social reasons.

A disciple of Sergey Korsakov, Serbskiy was the head physician of Tambov mental hospital from 1885 to 1887. Then he was offered the rank of the senior assistant in the mental hospital of Moscow University. In 1902 Serbsky became a professor extraordinary and the head of psychiatric studies at Moscow University. Pyotr Gannushkin was one of his students.

Serbskiy died of kidney disease. The Central Institute of Forensic Psychiatry was named after Serbskiy in 1921. Now the facility is known as the Serbsky State Scientific Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry.

Major works

 * The Forensic Psychopathology (1896-1900)
 * On Dementia praecox (1902)
 * Manual of Study of Mental Diseases (1906)