Like gender, age and marital status, occupation and place of residence were key components in how mental illness was understood by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century psychiatrists. As social and cultural factors that shaped the conditions and meanings of patients’ lives, they played a role in medical and lay perceptions of mental illness and in decisions about hospitalisation. In this chapter, I briefly examine the significance that work, employment and place of residence held in the psychiatric discourses before focusing on occupation and place of residence as indicators of both the social profile of patients and the reception of psychiatric institutions in early twentieth century Greece.