From a human rights perspective, the situation of helping mentally ill people in Russia has improved in many ways, but the number of illegal cases depriving healthy people of legal capacity is still high. Head of the Civil Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) Tatyana Malchikova told socialbites.ca that in 95 percent of cases of deprivation of legal capacity, the court sided with the psychiatric hospital, which advocated depriving the person of legal capacity.
“It was 99.9% when a psychiatric hospital advocated depriving a person of legal capacity and the court agreed that yes, this should be done. Now it’s 97-95%. So the percentage started to decrease. We have been doing a huge education effort all this time with legislatures, courts, lawyers, letting them know that there is such a clear violation of human rights because the trials are ongoing and people don’t even know about it. to them. We have dozens of such cases,” Malchikova said.
According to the President of CCHR, by law the psychiatrist does not even have to prove that the person is incompetent.
“He doesn’t have to bring a person to court and show him: Look, his saliva is dripping on the floor. The court may only require a document containing a psychiatric examination, without any other evidence required by law. We have identified several courts where no more than 8-10 minutes are given for each incapacity case. “This is a complete conveyor belt of deprivation of legal capacity,” Malchikova gave an example.
Malchikova emphasized that some courts handle a large number of cases of hospitalization and deprivation of legal capacity. People often apply for the CCHR after they or a relative has left a mental institution, or after their relative has been deprived of legal capacity.
“According to our information, the judge in one of these courts managed to evaluate 50 cases in just one day. This is probably a matter for the court itself. It is clear that it is impossible to plan 50 cases per day for a person to be hospitalized in a mental hospital. Most often, such cases of legal incapacity are handled by one or two judges in court. This is a certain specialization, which, in my opinion, also raises questions,” concluded socialbites.ca’s interlocutor.
Read more about how the CCHR deals with such cases, how everyone in Russia can be sent to a psychiatric hospital and not return, and Tatyana Moskalkova’s proposal to inform the Ministry of Internal Affairs about psychiatric diagnoses – in report “socialbites.ca”.
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