Ombudsman representatives: patients of Levonkivka Psychiatric Hospital in Chernihiv Region live in terrible medieval conditions

This conclusion was reached by the monitors of the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) after visiting the specified institution, studying the conditions of stay there and communicating with patients and staff.

At the time of the visit of the employees of the Department for the Implementation of the National Preventive Mechanism and public monitors, 133 patients with mental disorders were staying in the Levonkiv Psychiatric Hospital, 16 of them were incapacitated. They have actually been living in the hospital for years: there are people who have been there for 20-30 years, which is a blatant violation, because such people should be in a psychoneurological boarding school. Every year they are sent to the infectious disease department of the Chernihiv Regional Psychiatric Hospital for a week and, upon receiving them back, they are given a new card.

The Levonkiv psychiatric hospital is located 40 kilometers from Chernihiv in a small village. Some of its patients work 7-11 hours a day for free on the hospital’s farm (cowsheds, vegetable gardens, workshops). The staff calls it occupational therapy, but in fact it is exploitation: occupational therapy cannot last that long, and in addition, there are no rehabilitation specialists on the staff.

“This is not treatment, but labor slavery. In this hospital, the daily schedule is built for cows, not for patients. At 7 a.m., patients have breakfast and go to work,”

, said Tetyana Pechonchyk, head of the Human Rights Information Center, who participated in the monitoring visit.

During the visit, NPM monitors recorded many other violations. Yes, patients or their relatives give their pensions to medical staff. These funds pay not only for bread and groceries (6.56 UAH per day is allocated for patients’ food: people are malnourished and are forced to buy bread at their own expense), but also for the hospital’s needs: repairs and building materials, the purchase of bed linen, etc. Patients pay 50 UAH for washing and repairing linen twice a month, and there is a seamstress on staff who receives a salary, including for repairing clothes.

The hospital premises are old (they have been used since the time when there was a manor house here) and need repair. In the wards for 20 people – it is difficult to walk between the beds. The area per bed is less than in a colony – 2.2 m2, although according to the standards in such institutions there should be at least 6 m2 per person.

Four patients were lying on beds right in the corridor. There was not enough natural light, and people were in a shabby state.

Another patient was lying on a bed in a makeshift wooden-barred room: as the staff explained, he was isolated “because of his shabbiness.”

Only staff can use the toilets in the wards, while patients use the toilets on the street even in winter. At the same time, 70 men are forced to use a street toilet designed for two people. This toilet has no door and is located in such a way that while walking, patients and staff can watch this or that patient relieve themselves, which is a gross violation of the right to privacy.

There is only one shower and a bathtub to wash so many men, and in the summer they are forced to use a makeshift outdoor shower located right in the middle of the walking area.

The bed linen is very dirty, the pillows are black and greasy (while there is new and clean linen in the warehouse that is not being used).

“This means that either people are not washed, or they are not washed their linen”

, commented Olena Temchenko, an employee of the Department for the Implementation of the National Preventive Mechanism of the Commissioner’s Secretariat.

At the same time, the hospital staff reported that they wash men once every 10 days, and women once every 7 days.

Patients are unable to brush their teeth because they do not have toothbrushes. According to the staff, this is unnecessary, because “they do not even have teeth.”

Patients who do not work are actually outside all the time, even eating on the street.

They have nothing to do on the site, they just sit or lie on the broken wooden ladders on the ground.

The funding for medicines is also extremely insufficient – ​​only 3.56 UAH per day per person, as a result – the hospital uses only cheap drugs: first- and second-generation neuroleptics. Under these conditions, it is hardly possible to achieve progress in the health of patients. Therefore, it is not surprising that the mortality rate in the hospital is high – in the women’s ward last year it was 11%.

“Such institutions should not exist in the 21st century. All minimum standards of treatment of people are violated there. It seems that the staff does not even consider them to be people, responding to our remarks with the words: “What do you want: they are mentally ill!”

, – said Tetyana Pechonchyk.

Based on the monitoring results, the Commissioner for Human Rights is preparing response acts that will be sent to the leadership of the Ministry of Health, the Prosecutor General’s Office, and the Chernihiv Regional State Administration.

Press Service of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine