Particularly violent people in a psychiatric hospital. Lviv psychiatric hospital for especially violent
ONE of the first pictures that appears before your eyes when you hear the word “psychiatric hospital” is gloomy walls and bars, ambulance-orderlies fastening a violent patient with straps to the bed, and an evil doctor with a large syringe ... But inspired by Ken Kesey in the book "Over the Cuckoo's Nest" I didn’t see any horrors in Gaytyunishki, Voronovsky district. This is an ordinary hospital with its own medical staff and patients. But the patients here are special people. Murderers, rapists, thieves, swindlers, recognized by the court as insane at the time of the crime ... Under the most difficult type of surveillance, strict, they are trying to return to a normal way of life in the usual sense - to recover and go home. True, the duration of the "term" here is measured not by the severity of the offense, but by the severity of the mental state.
The administrative building of the psychiatric hospital, an architectural monument of the 17th century.
The REPUBLICAN psychiatric hospital, from which it is only a few kilometers to the border with Lithuania, is easy to find. At the entrance to the settlement, an information sign indicates the right direction - “Castle. Guytunishki. An architectural monument of the 17th century.
It is in such a unique place from a historical point of view - the only surviving fortified house in the country, erected by the Dutch Protestant Peter Nonhart - that the administrative building of the medical institution is located. There is also a dentistry, laboratory and other treatment rooms. Next to the castle is a modern building with a walking yard, which clearly stands out against the backdrop of an attractive architectural composition. It has three departments where patients are kept (now there are 280 such people in Gaytyunishki). The entrance to the territory is through a metal gate, near which guards are constantly on duty. Barbed wire around the perimeter. The regime object is a haven for the mentally ill who have crossed the law. If they did not have a mental disorder, many would receive maximum sentences.
Hospital department.
Inaccessible view of the building only from the outside. Inside - corridors typical for a hospital with nursing posts and wards. True, each of them is locked. There is one orderly for two wards, who keeps order, gives the patient products that are brought by relatives. The daily routine corresponds to the sick leave, only with some reservations. Patients have less free time: getting up at 6 am, procedures, breakfast. Then examinations, consultations, taking medications. An hour is allotted for personal affairs. Twice a week according to the schedule - a hairdresser. Dedicated time for bath procedures. According to a special schedule - calls and dates.
Head doctor of the hospital
Margarita Kudyan
Previously, patients with different conditions of detention - reinforced and strict - coexisted in the hospital. But after 50 heavy-duty beds were transferred to the Republican Mental Health Center in Novinki in 2012, only the strict prisoner remained in Gaytyunishki. The head doctor of the hospital, Margarita Kudyan, does not try to draw an analogy with the prison system, because it is not the criminals who are kept here, but the sick.
It is difficult for a non-medic to define this line. And indeed, how to qualify, for example, the murder of a mother by a son just because she did not give five rubles for a drink? Or the deeds of a rapist, on whose account dozens of crippled lives? It is difficult to write off the illness and act of another patient who is now being treated in Gaytyunishki. A man threw his little niece out of a seventh floor window. Like a kitten. The sister (the girl's mother) went to the store, the grandmother was somewhere nearby. The child was constantly crying, and this brought his uncle out of himself. He decided in this way to calm the little one ... Later he explained the act simply - she interfered. No remorse.
Often, indignant relatives of the victims call the hospital - how is it that the killers live in warmth, satiety and comfort? Doctors do not take on judicial functions. For them, patients are people who need help. And not only psychological. Sometimes there are those who need to be taught how to serve themselves. Margarita Georgievna recalls a case when a guy came to them, whose mother, until the age of 18, kept him chained in a barn. He did not know how not only to read and write - to brush his teeth and wash his face. After some time, the patient got used to it, learned the rules of hygiene. Moreover, he discovered the talent of a singer in himself: he began to actively participate in amateur performances, to perform. I realized that not only vodka brings joy in life ...
Ward orderly Ivan Adamovich.
Alcohol is one of the reasons that leads to crime. In a drunken stupor, I misunderstood my friend in a glass, a fight ensued, as a result - a murder. Moreover, statistics show that there are no more mentally ill people who have crossed the line of the law than healthy ones. They rob and kill both one and the other. In this case, only the punishment is different - a prison term or compulsory treatment.
Until 1989, the mentally ill were treated directly in the colonies, where the prisoners themselves worked as orderlies. After that, they began to be transferred to psychiatric clinics. Then the first batch of 60 people arrived from Mogilev to Gaytyunishki. Colleagues from the regional center devoted to the intricacies of working with such a contingent, because since 1956 (it was then that the hospital opened), the institution specialized only in the treatment of mentally ill patients. No criminals for you. When the doctors began to sort out the cases and read the case histories, terrible pictures surfaced. Murders, rapes, robberies… Ugly and ugly things shocked me. But, oddly enough, they were not afraid. Margarita Georgievna explains it simply:
The trainer entering the cage with the tigers is also a little afraid of them, but knows the weak points of the animals. We, thank God, do not have tigers, but patients whom we treat. If, for example, the doctor did not look at the history of the disease, did not really talk with the patient, he simply would not be aware of his characteristics, which means he would not know what to expect from the patient. But when you talk with him, and more than once, a trusting relationship is built. You see that there is a progressive remission and medicines help, why should there be fear? Yes, there are forms of the disease when a person can jump up and do something unexpected, but these are only 6-8 percent of the total.
True, violent ones are found in Gaytyunishki. Not so long ago, a patient with minor offenses was admitted to the hospital. But nevertheless, he is dangerous for society - everywhere he scandalizes, screams, climbs to fight. As a result - a whole folder with acts of analysis of each of his conflicts. With such a person, you need to be careful, clearly build a conversation and not allow any allegories. In the case of this patient, in addition to compulsory treatment, another function of the hospital comes into play - temporary isolation from society. What is its duration, even doctors do not undertake to predict:
We do not have a strict limit on the length of stay. On average, patients stay with us for at least five years. We can only write a submission to the court, in which we indicate that the patient has been in remission for a long time, takes a small dose of medication and does not pose a particular social danger. Then the court decides what to do. They don’t go home from us right away: compulsory treatment continues, but with general supervision at the place of residence. They pass it on the basis of regional hospitals, which include a department of compulsory treatment, where the intake of medicines is controlled.
What is the treatment for the mentally ill? Many drugs that scare the people have not been used in psychiatry for a long time. Haloperidol, for example, presented in the movies as a "terrible drug" is prescribed in adequate doses to save a person from hallucinations. Current medications can remove auditory and visual hallucinations, delusions of persecution, and make epileptic seizures more rare. In this area of medicine, medicines are approved by protocols, a diary is kept for each patient, where the use of any drug is justified.
But there are cases when drugs are powerless. A special story - sexual perversions. “Such people,” notes Margarita Kudyan, “most often we have centenarians, because such things cannot be cured. Same pedophilia. She is offered to be treated with hormone therapy, surgical castration. Doctors are still arguing about the effectiveness of such methods. Now a citizen of Belarus, who has been involved in more than one rape, has been transferred from a Russian clinic to Gaytyunishki. He committed all the deeds in a neighboring country, and both before hospitalization and after discharge, he raped and robbed. How to release this into society?
Doctors say that not all patients are aware of their guilt. That's how their psyche works. And some, on the contrary, after getting out of psychosis, they are very worried. Doctors are doing their best to help such patients. If there are relatives who have not turned away, this is a big plus.
At the moment of my arrival at the hospital, it was a reception day. The mothers and sisters of the patients go on a date. Those who, despite everything, continue to love them. Forgive after all, even non-sick killers.
Is it possible to understand that something is wrong with a loved one, there are deviations in the psyche? - I'm interested in the head physician.
It is very difficult to do this. Myopia sets in in relatives: they try to explain all the oddities by some circumstances. The fact is that we are all afraid of getting mental illness. Therefore, there is often a denial: here a loved one was upset, there the situation developed. Of course, for the most part, parents see that something is wrong in the family. They even take children to specialists, but the patient is not disclosed. For several receptions, it is difficult for a physician to understand and see the degree of the disease, the level of anxiety. You need to watch. And now the mother cries and says: I took the child to a specialist ...
There is an opinion that if someone ends up in an institution of this type, then he will certainly be lost as a person. However, the psychiatric hospital does not aim to throw the patient out of society, but, on the contrary, to help him return to this society. But are people ready to accept those who have embarked on the path of correction?
Margarita Georgievna recalls the case when a mentally ill person came to them. In court, he was found guilty of a terrible crime - he killed a little girl. With particular cruelty - a bloodied body was found in the forest. The family of the criminal, who lived in a small village where everyone knows each other, became an outcast. A mentally ill son is a good reason for gossip, and even after he has committed a terrible murder. The relatives of such a monster were simply forced to leave for the Russian Federation - they did not give life. But the mother's heart felt that the son was not to blame. As a result, a re-investigation was achieved. The accusation really turned out to be erroneous, and the man was acquitted. Yes, he remained mentally ill, but he did not commit a crime. However, he could not return home - the villagers would not accept him. Brand.
DOCTORS are not interested in putting a person on four meals a day and making him a dependent. Therefore, they make every effort to prevent this from happening. However, the former patient of a psychiatric hospital himself needs to have a strong character and will in order to start a new life from scratch. There are such examples.
The head physician remembers a patient with a severe form of mental disorder who killed his stepfather in a drunken fight. All relatives turned away from him, he did not maintain contact with his mother. A young daughter remained at home. After five years of treatment, he returned home and began a new life. He became an individual entrepreneur, resumed relations with his daughter: he bought her an apartment, supervised her education. He still calls Gaytyunishki. Don't forget doctors...
In Moscow, there are many objects that enjoy national fame and all that. Symbols of Moscow, and all of Russia: the Kremlin, St. Basil's Cathedral, GUM, VDNKh, Ostankino television tower, let's say. Books are written about them, tourists take pictures, not a day will pass without some shit photographer making a post with the Spasskaya Tower or the monument to Peter the work of our beloved Tsereteli. They write songs, you panmaesh.
Meanwhile, in Moscow there is a well-known brand known throughout the country and sung in songs. It has become a household name for all small provincial counterparts, but, nevertheless, for some reason, is not popular in its coverage. No one sees here crowds of tourists rushing to be imprinted in the background and all that.
I, of course, mean our beloved Psychiatric Hospital No. 1 named after Alekseev, known to the world as Kashchenko or Kanatchikov's dacha, too. I make up for this injustice and sprinkle this post, dedicating it to all the victims of punitive Soviet psychiatry...
In the second half of the 19th century, Moscow came close here. The border of the city passed here along the Chura River, which flows along the southern border of the Danilovsky cemetery. With the approach of the city to the previously wild places, the laying of the Warsaw highway, the area became quite a popular place for arranging dachas for various nouveaux riches of the economic boom. Thus, Zagorodnoye Highway appeared - branching off from Varshavskoye and leading to numerous dachas located around.
So a certain large merchant Kanatchikov bought the land from the landlords who had gone bankrupt in Paris and set up a dacha.
The dacha was built on the high right bank of the Chura River, towering over its floodplain and from here views of the Zamoskvorechie lying below opened. As can be seen from the map of 1888, it was located between two streams flowing from the southeast and northwest in ravines, from the northeast - the Chura floodplain. The place is secluded and pleasant for the private transportation of actresses and all sorts of bohemian characters for later pastime in all sorts of entertainments conducive to country rest.
Yes, I must say that this place was previously occupied by a noble estate that belonged to a certain landowner Beketov at least until 1835. One of the streams was dammed under him, forming a picturesque pond with an unusual name for the modern Becket.
At the beginning of the XIX century. it was an estate surrounded by groves, which belonged until 1835 to the brother of the prominent educator and publisher P.P. Beketov Ivan Petrovich Beketov, a well-known art collector and numismatist, a member of the Society of Russian History and Antiquities. Here he had a country house, semicircular in shape, with a pond and a greenhouse, a beautiful winter garden of three sections, connected to the house through a poultry house, located on a hill and surrounded by meadows and a park.
True, this place did not remain secluded for long. Moscow grew rapidly, at the end of the 19th century the construction of the Moscow Railway began here. We had merchants, all patrons, and as soon as it became clear that dancing with actresses would no longer be so private, the rightful owner sold the dacha to the city authorities for good money in 1869 ... The authorities didn’t really know what to do with the fallen gift, at first thinking to arrange it here either a slaughterhouse or something else
Finally, in 1894, in a building built by the architect L.O. Vasilyev with funds raised by the mayor Nikolai Aleksandrovich Alekseev, a bedlam city psychiatric hospital was opened here.
This is what it looked like in 1915:
Here we see the central U-shaped building built in 1894 by architect Vasiliev. Now it is the Administration Building. In the central part is the Church of the Virgin "Joy of All Who Sorrow".
The same in 1913
Central hall: 
Since 1979, there has also been a museum of the hospital. Free to visit. You can join for free: 
In 1904-06, the head physician of the hospital was P.P. Kashchenko, whose name the hospital bore from 1922 to 1994, who gave the second popular nickname to the hospital.
Tipus was interesting:
In 1876-1881 he studied at Moscow University, from where he was expelled for participation in the student revolutionary movement and expelled from Moscow to Stavropol. In 1885 he graduated from the medical faculty of Kazan University and received a medical degree. In 1889-1904 director of the psychiatric hospital of the Nizhny Novgorod Zemstvo (Lyakhovo colony). He was in charge of the Moscow and St. Petersburg psychiatric hospitals. In 1904-1906 he was the chief physician of the psychiatric hospital named after M. Alekseev in Moscow.
In 1905 he took part in the revolutionary events in Moscow, helping the wounded during the uprising on Presnya. In 1905-1906. led the illegal cross-party Red Cross. Organizer and chairman of the first in Russia Central Statistical Bureau for the registration of mental patients. From May 1917 he headed the neuropsychiatric section of the Council of Medical Colleges, in 1918-1920 he headed the subdepartment of neuropsychiatric care of the People's Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.
In Soviet times, due to the need to expand punitive psychiatry, the hospital was attached and expanded.
Let's take a walk.
In the main building there is such an arch:
After going through it, we will go to the technical building. Kitchen, boiler room, laundry - all this is concentrated here: 
Yes, by the way, in addition to the central church, there was another one on the territory - in the farthest corner, consecrated in honor of John of Rylsky. At the mortuary. The morgue is now located here: 
In addition, on the site in front of the facade of the Main Building, a chapel was also screwed in 1994, dedicated to the creator of the hospital Alekseev: 
Yes, in addition to religious spirituality, secular spirituality is also provided. There is a club. By the way, psychos have a lot of fun. It was here in 1999 that for the first time in my life I saw a TV with a diagonal of 1.5 meters. He was in the movie theater. Psychos, who are not violent, were taken to watch a movie based on him of a sedative nature. And here is another from the cultural enlightenment already in the departments:
Yes, besides, relatives can take a psycho and take him to the dining room:
Numerous buildings and departments are scattered around: 
If I'm not mistaken, this is one of the paid branches. Here all sorts of show business stars were cured of delirium tremens, overdoses and all sorts of alcoholism. In my memory, Milyavskaya lay somehow, she got out of a binge ...
This is a catering unit in a technical building. Here, walkers and soldiers gather for dinner to parse cans and deliver them to their departments. They are closely watched over by experienced nurses. And then there were cases...
Walking area behind the fences for violent: 
Non-violent relatives can take a walk in the park. There are benches and even fountains. No swans. To avoid.
On the territory there is a rehabilitation department, workshops, an "senile" department, and all sorts of tops up to the educational departments of medical universities and a mud bath.
Well, pain-less walking around the territory, let's go inside.
Canteen. You can watch TV, play checkers and just stare blankly at one point. Not forbidden.
Here is the TV. Nurse's console. If you want to switch - you need to ask permission.
Who does not want a TV - can take a nap until dinner ...
Creativity of the sick:
Library in the department.
Good day.
Visited, with a depressive disorder, recently in this institution as a patient. I prepared for two weeks, it was scary. The result of such wonderful films as "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", "Girl, Interrupted" and the series "AHS". Everything turned out not so scary, but still, the feeling is nasty in general from this place ...
The modern "durka" is a secure institution, with established rules and prohibitions, where, out of many prohibitions, there is at least one indulgence. This is smoking, which is allowed 3 times a day, if the change is good, then it happens 4 times and even 2 cigarettes. I called it "herding fools".
Since now is the age of scientific and technical progress, and everyone has various gadgets, then go crazy. Only mobile phones are allowed in the hospital. And then, twice a week, the time of use is no more than 15 minutes.
The most terrible thing for me was that, bathing day - once a week. And so, such as observing hygiene procedures, this is sitting on the toilet and scooping warm water from enameled buckets with half-cut plastic bottles, at 6.30 and 19.30, daily.
I was impressed by the food of this government institution... I won’t describe it too much, I’ll just say that it’s very small and all the food is absolutely insipid. Therefore, the majority of patients "live" through the parcels of loved ones. And it is during the distribution of gears and their subsequent hamstering that the "circus of freaks" begins! The medical staff seems to be used to this and is absolutely indifferent, sometimes they only shout. So, those who do not come, or rarely come, create a "heap-small" with begging, snatching and even arrogantly taking away food from weak patients. As I wrote above, this circus is not stopped, it is regulated, i.e. from 10 to 20 minutes this action takes place, three times a day.
In the described department (in view of the island region, the mental hospital has at most 5 departments), where I happened to spend 16 terrible days, “everyone” is lying. I mean disease. They are separated only by chambers. The first 3 are observational, the remaining 4 are for more or less adequate patients. But the attitude of the medical staff to all patients is almost the same. There is no division into "normal" and "abnormal". All of us, lying there, are abnormal for the staff ... Because of this, I have a universal sadness ...
I wrote "refusal of treatment". I could not come to terms with all of the above and with one more factor. I don’t know how it is on the mainland or in other countries, but if you get into the Sakhalin psychiatric hospital, then only the head is “treated”. If there are various diseases of the body, such as: joints, gastrointestinal tract, kidneys, allergies, etc., these diseases do not bother anyone. Stand up soldier!
After 14 days of my torment, I caught a serious cold. They didn't offer me anything except paracetamol... Knowing my body, without appropriate treatment, a cold could turn into a more serious form, I had to forget about my depression and urgently "do my feet" from the department.
In conclusion, I will write about our doctor. Not only is he the only one in the department, he is also elusive. You really need to run after him and catch him by the hand. For, besides, when you act, you talk with him, and then an audience with the "elusive avenger" only on Wednesdays and that's it. There are incoming specialists, but in order to call them, you must either state the necessary as much as possible upon admission, or really “pull” the medical staff so that they fix the problem / request.
On this, I finish the story. Try not to get sick at all, and especially take care of your psyche.
Patients unfortunate enough to be in psychiatric hospitals tend to remember them with a shudder. However, today's asylums for the mentally ill are just a paradise compared to what happened in such institutions a few decades ago. The few surviving photographs testify: in that era, mental hospitals were a real branch of hell on earth!
The restrictions on freedom were much stronger than now
At a time when effective and harmless sedatives did not yet exist, doctors used simple and effective, but extremely painful, and often dangerous remedies to calm patients and prevent them from harming themselves and others. Ropes and handcuffs, locking up for days and weeks in cramped closets or even in boxes - everything went into action. Such remedies often further intensified the patient's psychosis instead of really calming him down - however, the medicine of that time was most often unaware of this. 
A perfectly healthy person could end up in a psychiatric hospital
At the end of the 19th century, the list of indications for hospitalization in psychiatric clinics in the United States included the habit of masturbation, immoral behavior, intemperance, excessive religious zeal, association with bad company, as well as reading novels and using tobacco. Compulsory hospitalization was also subject to those who were hit by a horse in the head with a hoof, who had been in the war, or whose parents were cousins and sisters. A narrow list of several dozen testimonies leaves no doubt: each of us, somewhere in 1890, while in the United States, could easily have ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
Patients treated with whipping machines
Such machines were used a hundred years ago in psychiatric clinics to alleviate the symptoms of the disease in the mentally ill. Sticks of solid weight were beaten all over the patient's body from the back of the head to the heels: the doctors hoped that this would make him feel better. In reality, everything happened just the opposite - but, again, the doctors had no idea about this. 
Doctors really considered masturbation the cause of mental illness
A few decades ago, doctors were firmly convinced that masturbation can cause insanity. They quite sincerely confused the cause with the effect: after all, many patients in psychiatric clinics, unable to control themselves, engaged in masturbation from morning to night. Watching them, the doctors came to the conclusion that masturbation causes illness, although in fact it was only one of the symptoms. However, in the old days, patients in psychiatric clinics were required to wear such bulky and uncomfortable aggregates so that they could not masturbate. Walking in them was uncomfortable and sometimes painful, however, despite this, the patients of the clinics lived in them for weeks, and sometimes for years.
Women in psychiatric clinics were forcibly subjected to "vaginal massage"
Surprisingly, while masturbation was considered dangerous for men, it was prescribed for women as a remedy for hysteria. This diagnosis could be given to a woman for anything from irritability to the presence of sexual desires. As a treatment, the so-called "vaginal massage" was prescribed, that is, the massage of the vagina with the help of a special device, bringing the patient to orgasm. Of course, no one asked the patients themselves for permission - and yet, given the situation in mental hospitals, there was by no means the worst, although useless, method of treatment.
Steam cabins were also considered a sedative
These boxes are not cages, but special soothing steam cabins of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Despite their intimidating appearance, there was nothing particularly terrible about them. In fact, these were similarities to modern single sauna barrels, which today can be found in many spas today. Doctors believed that such a steam room calms violent patients. This method of treatment could even be called pleasant, if not for one "but": as you can see in the picture, patients were put in boxes fully dressed, which turned the pleasure of the sauna into slow torture.
Women were more likely to be psychiatric patients than men
Sending a woman to a psychiatric hospital a few decades ago was much easier than sending a man. For this, the already mentioned diagnosis “hysteria” was most often used, under which anything could be adjusted, even resistance to a rapist husband. Reading was considered another risk factor: it was believed that it unequivocally leads a woman to insanity. Many of the fair sex spent years in psychiatric hospitals only because, according to hospital documents, they were caught reading at 5.30 in the morning.
Psychiatric hospitals of former eras suffered from overcrowding
With such a huge number of indications for hospitalization, it is not surprising that all psychiatric hospitals of the past suffered from an excess of patients. They coped with overcrowding without ceremony: they stuffed people into the wards like herring in a barrel, and in order to fit more, they took away beds and other "excesses" from the wards, giving patients the freedom to settle down on the bare floor, and for greater convenience, they also chained them to walls. Modern straitjackets against such a background seem to be a model of humanism!
Children lived in psychiatric hospitals for years
In the old days, there were no special children's clinics, so small patients - suffering, for example, from mental retardation or persistent behavioral disorders - ended up in the same clinics as adult patients and lived there for years. But, even worse, there were many healthy children in the mental hospitals of those times. Here lived the children of patients, medical staff, single mothers who had nowhere to go with babies, as well as children left without parents. All this horde of children was raised mainly by patients: the medical staff simply did not have time for this because of the heavy workload. It is easy to guess who these kids grew up with.
Doctors regularly used electric shock as a remedy.
Electroshock therapy, when a high current is applied to the patient's head, is now sometimes used in psychiatric clinics, but only in the case of global disorders, when, as they say, the patient has nothing to lose. But half a century ago, it was used all the time, including as a sedative. In fact, electric shock did not calm anyone, but only delivered unbearable pain to patients. The famous mathematician John Nash, who suffered from schizophrenia, was subjected to electric shock in American psychiatric clinics back in the 1960s, and later recalled this experience as the worst in his life.
Trying to treat with a lobotomy, doctors turned patients into vegetables
Back in the middle of the 20th century, many psychiatrists considered lobotomy to be a real way to rid a patient of schizophrenia or obsessive-compulsive disorder. This operation looked terrible: the doctor inserted a kind of ice pick through the corner of the patient's eye and, punching through the thin bone of the eye cavity, with a sharp movement, blindly dissected the nervous tissue of the brain. After the operation, the person lost his intellect, his coordination of movements suffered, and blood poisoning often began due to non-sterile equipment. And yet, lobotomy was considered a panacea for schizophrenics for decades: for example, in the United States in the early 1950s, about 5,000 lobotomies were performed a year.
You could get into a psychiatric clinic because of non-traditional sexual orientation
The fact that a wrong sexual orientation was considered a mental illness a hundred years ago probably does not surprise anyone. It is amazing how doctors infer sexual preferences when deciding whether to take a patient to the hospital! So, in one case, she spent several years in a clinic for the mentally ill only because she loved to wear trousers and fiddle with technology. There are cases with several women when they were recognized as mentally ill because of too low sexual appetite: asexual ladies in those days were considered closet lesbians, believing that a normal woman in her right mind had no right to simply reject her husband! 
Both the lack and excess of religiosity a hundred years ago led to a mental hospital
A hundred years ago in the United States, a person who refused the help of a therapist or surgeon for religious reasons (as Scientology fans do today, for example) had every chance of going to a psychiatric clinic instead of surgery. But the lack of religious feeling was also fraught with falling into a psychiatric hospital: there are several cases when people spent more than one year in houses of sorrow just because they openly declared themselves atheists.
Doctors who treated the psyche knew almost nothing about her
A hundred years ago, doctors knew almost nothing about the functioning of the human brain, so their treatment was more like cruel experiments on people. Patients were doused with ice water, drilled into their skulls, parts of the brain were removed, not because the doctors were confident in the effectiveness of these measures, but only in order to understand whether they worked or not. Not surprisingly, the death rate in psychiatric clinics of a hundred years ago was perhaps a little lower than in plague hospitals.
Abandoned mental hospitals today - objects for gloomy excursions
It was only in the 1970s and 1980s that the Western world began to abandon the practice of mass hospitalizations of patients in "houses of sorrow" and cruel and ineffective methods of treatment. In the 1970s, psychiatric hospitals in the United States and Europe began to close en masse. At the same time, there were many real patients on the street who were not able to answer for themselves. Well, the buildings of the former psychiatric clinics today are the most popular objects for young extreme people who search every corner here, looking for traces of the era of the bloody dawn of psychiatry, which lasted several decades.
Tell me, do crazy people cause you fear? Probably, after the epoch-making horror film "The Silence of the Lambs" with the inimitable Anthony Hopkins in the title role, for most of us the word mental hospital has become associated with an escaped perverted psychopath, like this very Professor Haniball Lecter. Plus all those films from the Wrong Turn series, in which silly students come to an abandoned psychiatric hospital, from where there is no way out and they are beaten up like the resurrected souls of psychos. Scary? A little south of Lvov, in the village of Zaklad, a psychiatric hospital and a penal colony of strict regime coexist side by side. It's funny, isn't it? What to consider as an extreme degree of degradation of the personality: getting into a psychiatric hospital, getting into a colony, or a transfer from a colony to a psychiatric hospital? Where would you like to spend the rest of your days, in a madhouse, or in a colony? Personally, I don’t even know, I categorically do not accept both options. And yet, about 12 years ago, I almost ended up in the most natural psychiatric hospital, and of my own free will. Surprised? Yes, just an alternative was prison -
My story is boringly banal: while serving in the army, I stole a few clips of cartridges in order to shoot at targets with a machine gun at my leisure. God knows what kind of crime, everyone was taking something away from the base, see the article on this topic "", for this they usually give a month in disbat and rightly so. But I didn’t want to go to an army prison so much that I threw myself into all serious - I decided to mow down like a psycho. The one who served in the army is now smiling, they say, nothing original, every second soldier mows down like a psycho in order to excuse himself from service. And it is true. Military psychiatrists are shot sparrows, you can’t deceive them with all sorts of ants in a jar. The general idea is that a real psycho will never go to a psychiatrist to complain that he is sick. A real psycho considers himself a completely healthy member of society, has his own position and is ready to teach a lesson to those who do not agree with him.
I remember that I had a penchant for the epistolary genre (I still have it, you are reading these lines), so I took and wrote in a notebook a couple of pages of some nonsense, where I described my vision of the world. Scribbled supplemented with clumsy drawings. And the crown! It remains to throw this crap to colleagues in such a way that it is "accidentally" found. Moreover, it was not someone who didn’t care deeply, but a person who cared about everything that mattered. This person was supposed to convey the necessary information to the authorities. Therefore, I threw my writings to one soldier, who periodically "knocked" on other soldiers to the commander. Who smoked in the wrong place, who was absent from duty - all this quickly reached the management and we guessed who was ratting. By the way, now this man has risen a lot - he serves as a middle-ranking official in the Israeli Ministry of Internal Affairs; can, with a stroke of the pen, destroy hundreds of families of immigrants from the former USSR, saying that they came with fictitious documents. Big boss!
But back to the military service and the mental hospital. The current official, and at that time an ordinary informer, completed the task assigned to him with a bang, after a couple of days I was first called by the alarmed commander of the unit (namely, he was to judge me for clips with cartridges and send me to the disbat) and anxiously asked if everything I'm fine. I replied that yes, I am close to the implementation of the plan. He frowned, but what did you think Sasha? Nothing, I replied, never mind, you will soon understand. He sent me to a psychiatrist. Hooray!
And then everything turned out to be easier than I thought. You don't need to say anything to the psychiatrist, on the contrary, you need to ignore him and repeat that he will not be able to make a psycho out of you. I remember stubbornly saying that I had heard about the practice of sending unwanted people to a psychiatric hospital, but this will not work with me, because I have a plan. What is the plan, the military psychiatrist asked, to which I replied, "Get off me, it's none of your business." And again hit the top ten! I was sent for a compulsory psychiatric examination. It was no longer in a military unit, but in the most natural psychiatric department of a large hospital. Three gray-haired doctors asked me amazing questions from the series "There are 5 colorful balls in front of you, choose any of them" - to which I said that I did not intend to play their games. Then they asked me what is my mother's name? I answer that my mother's name is Valery. They were surprised, because this is a male name, and we asked what my mother's name was. I answered that since dad left us when I was a small child, so mom was for us with my sister and mom and dad. Doctors happily nodded "Yes, yes, everything is clear, the family drama left its mark on the psyche of a soldier!".
The commission unanimously decided that I was of limited fit for military service. Do you know what that meant in practice? That I can not be judged for the above-mentioned clips with cartridges! I returned back to the military unit with the appearance of a conqueror of the universe, you fled, they wanted to put me in jail - it won’t work, because my exceptionally difficult mental state makes me beyond jurisdiction. It was in these words that I told the unit commander my news. He chuckled, "Maybe you managed to outwit the medical board, but you won't fool me, I know that you are a malingerer." It seems that I answered him something from the series "I do not understand what it is about."
Gift from Count Stanisław Skarbek
In 1875, in the village of Zaklad, 40 km from Lvov, a huge shelter for orphans and the poor was built. This is a real masterpiece of palace and landscape art. The patron was posthumously count of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Galician landowner, large landowner, founder of the New Polish Theater in Lviv, the so-called "Skarbek Theater" (now the National Academic Ukrainian Drama Theater named after Maria Zankovetska).
In an elegantly built beautiful building, 60 old people were under constant care and homeless orphans were brought up. Children of many nationalities lived here, but education was conducted in Polish in a strict Catholic spirit. In addition to general education, children also received professional knowledge: girls studied gardening, cooking and sewing, and young men learned various types of useful crafts. In total, up to 400 orphans lived in Zaklad at the same time: 250 boys and 150 girls. To arrange a shelter in the palace, Skarbek sold the theater building in Lviv, a menagerie, three towns and 28 villages. But the count received a palace-institute in the Mortgage in perpetual possession.
Skarbek died in Lvov on October 28, 1848. He was buried in Lviv at the Lychakiv cemetery. True, in 1888, when the construction of the palace in Zaklad was finally completed, the body of Stanislav Skarbek was reburied in a crypt in a small cemetery in the forest not far from his creation - the palace-institute. After his death, according to the will of Skarbek, all his fortune was transferred to the maintenance of the “Charity Institute for Orphans and the Wretched” and the “Pension Fund for Actors, Directors, Singers of the Count Skarbek Theater in Lviv” created by him.
Now in the palace there is a mental hospital for violent lunatics, and walking along the corridors you hear here and there the cries of Napoleon Bonaparte and the groans of Giordano Bruno burning in the fire -
All windows have powerful, but very rusty bars -
The linen of hospital patients is drying on the street, and the smell of the hotel is so terrible that it is impossible to be near. The feeling that the linen is not washed, but simply being soiled with the feces of patients, it is simply hung out to dry, and then returned back. No, it’s really not clear to me for what purpose the linen really smeared with sewage hangs on the street and dries -
It seems that the problem with linen in the hospital is global: the prisoners of the psychiatric hospital hang out dirty linen directly on the window bars of their wards -
We decided to go upstairs to look into the chambers -
Ignoring the occasional screams and screams, we stubbornly walked up the stairs until we ran into a grate. There is nowhere else to go. All rooms are locked, you have to knock. But who will let us in? Most likely the broad-shouldered orderlies will be driven to hell.
Kitty, aren't they tormenting you here? Not the best place you chose to live -
My other articles about Ukraine.
