Psychiatric and psychoneurological boarding schools in Chernihiv region: torture instead of help

People who haven’t left their premises for years. Neglected wards with bedsores. Wet diapers instead of diapers. A stench that makes your eyes water. Instead of rehabilitation, there is “occupational therapy”, including on the homestead plots of the boarding school employees. Monitoring groups of the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) witnessed such conditions of stay in psychoneurological institutions of the Chernihiv region.

Levonkivka Psychiatric Hospital

It became known in July that the conditions of stay and treatment in the Levonkivka Psychiatric Hospital are terrible and do not meet even the minimum standards, after a visit by representatives of the Department for the Implementation of the NPM of the Secretariat of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and public monitors.

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

, said the head of the Human Rights Information Center

Tetyana Pechonchyk

, who participated in the monitoring visit.

Some of the patients have been in the hospital for 20-30 years, although such patients should be in a boarding school. They transfer their pensions to the medical staff of the institution. The money is spent not only on 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 on the needs of the hospital: repairs and building materials, the purchase of bed linen, etc.

The rooms are cramped: 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.

Only staff can use the toilets in the departments, while patients use a street toilet without a door even in winter.

From the response of the Department of Health of the Chernihiv Regional State Administration, it became known that a decision was made to transfer some patients to other institutions, and it is also planned to train middle and junior staff in the skills of handling and providing assistance to such patients.

Horodnya Psychoneurological Boarding House

“During a visit to the Horodnya Psychoneurological Boarding House, we witnessed the negligent care of the institution’s staff for bedridden women: they lay without diapers, wet, in urine, the wooden floor in the rooms was soaked with feces, which caused a strong unpleasant stench. At the same time, diapers were found in the warehouse. A ward with a cancerous tumor had never been examined by an oncologist in 3 years”

, recalls

Iryna Sergienko

, representative of the Department for the Implementation of the National Preventive Mechanism of the Office of the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights.

No classes are provided in the boarding school, so people just sit or walk along the corridors all day, digging vegetable gardens or herding cows. When asked by monitors why only 1 nurse is caring for 38 bedridden wards, the nurse and the director of the institution replied that another nurse went with the wards to dig beets. At the same time, some women shared that in response to their reluctance to go to work, the staff threatens not to give them their share of the pension. They also complained about poor nutrition and malnutrition.

There is no rehabilitation in the institution.

“In one of the rooms with an area of ​​up to 10 square meters, two women aged 47 live, who move around in wheelchairs with additional assistance. In this room, we found only one bed. It turned out that one of the women sleeps in a wheelchair, which can be changed positions. Her whole life is spent in this wheelchair. Writing answers to questions on the phone (her health condition does not allow her to speak fully), the woman explained that she is used to it and it suits her”

, – says NPM monitor

Serhiy Burov

.

Lyubets Psychoneurological Boarding House

Patients of the Lyubets Psychoneurological Boarding House have not been able to go outside for several years – there is no ramp for wheelchairs in the department for seriously ill patients. The ward for the unreliable (women prone to escape) has not been allowed outside for three years. There is also no shower in this ward. According to the women, they are watered with a hose while washing themselves. There are no containers with drinking water in any ward, and they do not use diapers. The cost of treating one patient is UAH 1.45 per day.

Separated by distances and fences

Such violations are not only characteristic of the institutions of the Chernihiv region, where the monitors of the National Preventive Mechanism visited. According to the ministries of health and social policy, in whose system the institutions are located, as of January 1,

Ukraine has

144

psychoneurological boarding schools, in which almost

28.3 thousand

people with mental disorders live, and about

70

psychiatric hospitals, designed for



30.0 thousand beds


. The vast majority of them are located at a considerable distance from regional centers, society has “walled off” from “them” with distances and fences, these people are simply not on the “agenda” of the country – regardless of which government comes.

“What we saw during the visits, unfortunately, only confirms the systemic problems in mental hospitals and boarding schools. A significant part of the wards of these institutions live in conditions that, from the point of view of international experience, are equated with cruel treatment and torture”

, says

Volodymyr Shurduk

, a representative of the Department for the Implementation of the National Preventive Mechanism, a specialist in the field of psychiatry.

NPM Monitor

Tetyana Pechonchyk

adds:

“The staff of the institutions (often demoralized and overworked) simply do not see people in the patients of psychiatric hospitals and clients of psychoneurological boarding schools. And the reason is not that cruel people work there. They often simply do not know how to do it differently. Most of the boarding school staff does not have even minimal training to work in the social sphere and the field of providing medical services. The requirements for junior medical staff are very simple: to perform all the complex, dirty, nervous work of serving patients – for pennies and often with a double or triple workload”

.