This PhD thesis deals with the politics of mental health in Croatia, basing its research on ethnological fragments from Psychiatric hospital Ugljan and the life of Andrija Štampar, one of the most formative figures of public healthcare policies in the national, regional and global context. Ethnographic fragments in this text rely on the analytical and theoretical work of Anna Tsing. In addition to Tsing, this thesis relies on the works of Lauren Berlant, Ann Stoler, Joao Biehl, Diddier Fassin, and Sara Ahmed. The focus of this thesis is on the way „transition“ persists in the psychiatric hospital Ugljan, as well as in attempts that within fragments of an encounter between “Štampar’s public healthcare” and today’s “global health” identified specific moments of “ruination” or “collapse”. Translating one into the other unwinds in transition that creates specific effects which the work traces. In that context, Psychiatric hospital Ugljan is analyzed as a ruin, as well as the concepts of “public health”. “mental health” and its representations in popular culture. This is done through genres of sentimentality that generate compassion toward those who are marked as vulnerable – the mentally ill. By this way of thinking with ruinations, this work is primarily dealing with public health and its appropriations, as well as its neglect and strategic and active positioning in the politics of the present.