Khudolin, Vladimir

Vladimir Khudolin was born in Ogulin, Croatia . After graduating from high school, he studied at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Zagreb, where he specialized in neurology and psychiatry. After defending his doctoral dissertation, he was head of the Department of Neurology, Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology at the University of Zagreb. For many years, he directed the Mladen Stoyanovich University Hospital in Zagreb.

He was a member of the expert group on alcohol and other addictions at the World Health Organization , as well as the president of the World and Mediterranean Psychiatric Association of Social Psychiatry. He has published over 60 scientific papers and over 500 articles on the topics of alcoholism, social psychiatry and a healthy lifestyle .

In the professional activities of Professor Vladimir Khudolin as a psychiatrist who worked in the period from the 40s to the 90s of the 20th century, all stages of development of scientific achievements in this field were passed. Thus, the widespread practice of using an insulin coma and placing patients in closed departments where fixation was applied to beds has replaced the integration of special psychiatric and narcological knowledge into social systems of relationships.

Professor Vladimir Khudolin began his career in 1947 at the Hospital of Sisters of Mercy in Zagreb ^[2] . Since 1954, he began to deliberately deal with the rather complex problem of alcohol dependence . And in 1959 he headed the Department of Neurology and Psychiatry of the University of Zagreb , replacing Professor Joseph Breitenfeld in this position.

In 1953, Dr. Khudolin proposed a new “open door” concept for Croatian psychiatry. This marked the beginning of a new era of social psychiatry . Vladimir Khudolin very early came to the conclusion that the course of a mental illness is influenced by many factors, including environmental , social , psychological , biological . Thus, improving mental health is a consequence of solving a problem in which many components can be identified that mutually influence each other. This approach subsequently received the name of biopsychosocial-spiritual, or socio-ecological.

Charismatic qualities allowed Vladimir Khudolin to successfully lead a large team of doctors and specialists from related fields of knowledge.

On April 1, 1964, Dr. Khudolin founded the first family sobriety club in Croatia. The first family sobriety club served as a model for clubs, which subsequently began to develop in Zagreb , and then throughout Croatia. Subsequently, the Croatian Association of Family Sobriety Clubs was created ^[3] , the activities of which are mainly preventive in nature and aimed at maintaining mental health. The creation of such an organization has provided significant assistance in the rehabilitation of alcohol addicts and their families.

In the future, Dr. Khudolin continued to develop treatment strategies. He paid much attention to the provision of outpatient care . In 1968, additional centers for helping patients suffering from alcoholism were opened, 30-80 km from Zagreb - in the cities of Varazdin , Sisak , Karlovac and ераumberak .

In 1971, Dr. Khudolin became the head of the Department of Neurology, Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology at the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Zagreb.

In 1972, a program was organized to help people suffering from alcoholism and tuberculosis at the Klenovnik hospital.

Since 1978, Dr. Hudolin began teaching at the School of Social Services of Trieste (Italy), and also conducted hundreds of courses in Italy to educate professionals and the public on problems related to alcohol consumption.

Dr. Khudolin was the organizer and co-organizer of a large number of national and international congresses , symposia and meetings of specialists in the field of addiction treatment.

During the last ten years of his life from his retirement in 1987 until his death on December 28, 1996, Vladimir Khudolin worked mainly in Italy . Here, under his leadership and according to his method, about 2500 family sobriety clubs were created ^[4] . Thus, family sobriety clubs began to spread from Italy to other countries in Europe and the world.

For work in the field of psychiatry related to resolving issues of alcohol dependence, Dr. Khudolin was awarded a number of national and international awards.

In 1983, Vladimir Khudolin was awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of the city of San Daniele del Friuli, Italy

Based on the experience of the traditional treatment of alcoholism in psychiatry and the problems associated with it, Vladimir Khudolin, starting from the fifties of the twentieth century, began to use the principles of family psychotherapy and the methodology of the therapeutic community developed in the UK by psychiatrist .

Thus, Vladimir Khudolin gradually but consistently advocated for the deinstitutionalization process in solving problems associated with dependence on alcohol and other psychoactive substances . The therapeutic groups he created for alcohol addicts and their families began to exist not in psychiatric hospitals , but in the immediate living conditions of such people. Such groups, called family sobriety clubs ^[5] , have contributed to the resolution of problems associated with the use of alcohol, thanks to the positive impact of a familiar environment.

Later, in 1986, Vladimir Khudolin proposed an approach to the treatment of alcoholism, based on the action of the family sobriety club , where a significant place was given to the mutual support of families with alcohol problems. In this approach, the dependent person is provided not so much professional assistance by specialists during hospitalization, but a positive result is achieved due to the mutual support of people who have a common experience in overcoming difficult life situations. This approach is conceptually justified. According to the methodology of Vladimir Khudolin, alcoholism can be considered more likely not as a physical illness, but as a type of deviant behavior, style or lifestyle. And not only the so-called "alcoholic" should participate in solving the problem, but also members of his family, his closest significant circle.

In this understanding of the problems associated with alcohol dependence, in their causal value not only the influence of individual factors (genetic components, personality structure, non-constructive models of education) is considered, but primarily their continuous interaction between each other, other factors also have a great influence ( family and social). It so often happens that in establishing the etiology of problems associated with alcohol consumption, it is impossible to establish any single cause with accuracy, and, as a result, it is impossible to choose an effective treatment method that would affect this particular etiological factor. Therefore, Vladimir Khudolin proposed abandoning the traditional biological medical paradigm of alcoholism as a disease in order to offer a broader systemic view. Presumably, not without the influence of a member of the WHO expert group on mental health, alcoholism and other addictions, Vladimir Khudolin in 1979, the term “alcoholism” was removed from the International Classification of Diseases and replaced by the term “alcohol dependence syndrome”. The new approach was called socio-ecological and was based on a biopsychosocial-spiritual model of overcoming addiction to alcohol and other psychoactive substances ^[6] .

In the early 90s, Dr. Khudolin introduced the concept of “anthropological spirituality” to reflect all the components (emotional, religious, social, political) that characterize the distinctive features of a person from other living beings. Vladimir Khudolin claims that the term “anthropological spirituality” can be understood as a synonym for the concept of social culture. He believes that family sobriety clubs can help enrich the spiritual sphere in communities of people by updating the concepts of peace, mutual assistance, friendship and love. Since 1992, families and presenters of family sobriety clubs began to meet annually in Assisi (Italy) ^[7] at the Congress of Anthropological Spirituality.

1. Familie und Alkoholismus. Vladimir Hudolin. Neuland-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1975
2. What is alcoholism? Popular library on alcoholism and other addictions. Santa Barbara Psychiatric Medical Group and the Psychiatric Foundation of Santa Barbara, 1976
3. Social psychiatry. Plenum Press, 1984
4. Psihijatrija. Stvarsnost, 1984
5. Klubovi liječenih alkoholičara. Školska knjiga, 1990
6. Sofferenza Multidimensionale Della Famiglia ". Eurocare, Padova, 1995
7. Club of Treated Alcoholics: A Guide for the Work in the Clubs of Treated Alcoholics (social-ecological Approach) with Works of Vladimir Hudolin. Vladimir Hudolin, European School of Alcohology and Ecological Psychiatry, Scuola Europea di Alcologia e Psichiatria Ecologica, 2001

• Vladimir Khudolin on the website www.hudolin.it
• The experience of the Family Sobriety Clubs (article by: Baburin A.N., Ermoshin A.F., Zhokhov V.N., Karpova M.N., Nikulin A.V., Turbina L.G. // Issues of Addiction Medicine. - No. 2. 1994, pp. 91−94 - on the website of the Interregional social movement in support of sobriety family clubs )
• Family sobriety clubs (published by the Orthodox Center for Narcological Assistance together with the Information and Research Center for Problems Related to Alcohol Consumption (Italy, Trento) - on the website of the Interregional Social Movement in Support of Family Sobriety Clubs )
• Family sobriety clubs: the method of Vladimir Khudolin (article on: Gatalskaya G.V., Korotkevich O. A. Psychological assistance to adult children of alcoholics // Psychotherapy. - 2011. - No. 5. - C. 59-63 - on the site Alcoholism & Healthy Image Life (HLS)
• Memoirs of A. Guilherm Ferreira about Vladimir Khudolin (website of the World Association of Social Psychiatry The life of the WASP from 1964 to 1992
• Fragments of videos of the speeches of Professor Vladimir Khudolin on the Stefania Volonghi channel