"We are speaking about those, who are deprived of liberty because they committed crimes; they committed crimes because they have mental health problems; they require medical treatment but get penitentiary punishment; they or their relatives eager to change it but the law provides no option. The circle is full," said UNDP Democratic Governance Adviser Marcus Brand.

 

The area of forensic psychiatric and prison mental health services remains, by some accounts, one of the most unreformed. One of the reasons for this is the secluded character of the area, which has allowed it to stay frozen in its practices over decades of independence. At the same time, the number of patients undergoing what may hardly be termed treatment is about 1,700.

 

Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Valeriya Lutkovska stressed that it is time to switch from punishment to treatment in prison mental health services, and that people with mental health problems must be considered and treated as human beings.

 

 

"I will never forget one patient," says Robert Van Voren. "It's a 25-year-old girl, who five years ago stabbed another woman in a department store. Her diagnosis was the famous "sluggish schizophrenia", the trademark of Soviet psychiatry. Here she was, already five years inside, outwardly aged some twenty years instead of five, and still at least another five years of incarceration to go. Her biggest wish: to learn English, so she could do something by the time she would be discharged. But that was forbidden, because she was not permitted to have an MP3 player. We saw destroyed lives, and all because of a system that looks at the crime instead of at the person."

 

Findings of the monitoring group point out to systemic violations of the international human rights standards and declared harmonization with European values. The report is a key that opens a door for the first steps on the roadmap to institutional transformation in this realm.