20.07.2012
The latest incident in the orphanage located in the village of Sophieno (Russia, Moscow region) demonstrated that punitive psychiatry is still being widely used in Russian medical and educational institutions. Cynical and insensible administration of such institutions makes the only solution of the problem it considers to be correct: it’s much easier to lock up a person into a mental health clinic, “improving” him or her using tranquillizers than to work on his or her social adaptation.
Recently, Ksenia Turchak, a young journalist from the town of Naro-Fominsk, Moscow region, was accused according to the first paragraph of article 137 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “violation of integrity of privacy” for accomplishing her professional duty. The excuse for the prosecution was her attempt to sort out the situation with torturing children in Russian orphanages.
The matter is that, while working in the Nara-Novost newspaper, last autumn Ksenia Turchak carried out journalistic investigation concerning the use of punitive psychiatry in the orphanage in the village of Sophieno located in the Moscow region of Russia. Her publications literally saved a foster child of the orphanage from forced hospitalization into a mental health clinic. The principal of the orphanage found it to be the best punishment for the boy who used to escape from the orphanage from time to time. Make it worse, the investigation revealed that 10 other foster children were sent to “a funny farm” for forced treatment.
At present, Naro-Fominsk area authorities admit the facts of abuse in the Sophieno orphanage. As an evidence, the Interfax news agency quoted the words of the Head of Department of Education of the Naro-Fominsk area government Vladimir Bykov: “We, as the founders of the institution [the orphanage], must be responsible for it. The lack of our control is no credit to us.”
The Russian news service says that Russian ombudsman for children Pavel Astahov who inspected the orphanage among other things noted: “There is no supervisory board of regents here, neither is medical license. Children swear in dirty language. There are wild animals on the orphanage’s territory. There is also a shop selling tobacco and beer in close vicinity.”
The World League “Mind Out Of Drugs”, led by Professor Jenishbek Nazaraliev, has always been resolutely against such methods. Even in the beginning of his career, in late 1980s, the professor rejected “punitive psychiatry” widely spread in the Soviet Union at that time. Professor Nazaraliev believes that punitive psychiatry is inhumane, abusive and counterproductive method of solving the tasks of psychiatry. Professor Nazaraliev’s position has considerably contributed to the tradition of denying archaic methods of treatment and promoted individual socialization of every patient.
