Abstract
BACKGROUND: Institutional alcohol treatment in facilities adopting the "Apolinar Model" has a tradition going back more than 60 years in what is now the Czech Republic. Associated especially with Jaroslav Skála, this influential model had a significant effect on the development, progress, and orientation of such treatment facilities, with the Červený Dvůr alcohol institution being one of them.
AIMS: To map the history of the establishment and development of the Červený Dvůr institution from 1971 to 2016. METHODS: Data was collected by means of document analysis involving the identification of sources relevant to the institution and the subject matter.
The sources were compared with the data obtained on the basis of semistructured interviews with selected respondents affiliated with the treatment facility. Open coding was used to process the data.
Then the data collected from the interviews was matched with data from the literature and archived records and the results were projected onto a timeline. RESULTS: An integrated description of the history of the largest addiction treatment facility in what is now the Czech Republic was created.
The study discusses issues which could also be encountered by other institutions of a similar type. CONCLUSIONS: The development of the institution and the structure of the treatment programme were influenced by the tradition of approaches promoted by the founders of alcohol treatment in what was then Czechoslovakia.
The therapeutic approaches applied by the institution were mainly based on the "Apolinar Model" model of treatment, but were also complemented with specific local elements.