with his/her consent, except in cases provided in Article 13, which addresses involuntary
hospitalization. Under Article 40(2), a person admitted for treatment on a voluntary basis can
leave by personal request, statement of his/her legal representative or by a decision of the
treating physician. In practice, the vast majority of the patients of the psychiatric hospitals are
placed there by the decision of their families. Another reason is homelessness and orphanage.
The number of people subject to "supervision" in psychiatric institutions varies greatly from
severe cases of "lost touch with the real world" to cases where individuals are placed in
institutions who require preventive measures. In this case, there is a question of the expediency
of placement in mental institutions of persons who are in need of prevention of mental
disorders and who could receive the necessary services in regional hospitals and family
medicine centers, which significantly would have contributed to the rational use of the state
budget and reduce the physical and moral violence against persons in psychiatric institutions.
However, in practice, patients are often treated in mental institutions for decades,
which is inhuman treatment. Despite the article of the law on voluntary check-out of the
patients, doctors argue that the patient is not entitled to check-out in the absence of relatives.
If relatives refuse to take or are not taking the patient to their home, than he/she is forced to
stay in a mental boarding school for a non-specific term, and sometimes for life. There is also
indisputably a practice in which the initiators of such a long stay of treatment are relatives or
close members attempting to seize property of a relative.
Also, patients consent to treatment because of the threat from the institutions. When
application is made to the court, the judges almost always take the side of institutions.
Institutions receive funding for the number of beds, so they are interested in keeping as many
patients as possible for the longest time. Independent monitoring of mortality is not provided,
as pathologists who produce posthumous examination work for the same institution and have
treated the person. In addition, patients who are on a "voluntary" hospitalization become
"prisoners" of psychiatric institutions. Only those patients are free to move around the grounds
of the facility who agree to perform work. For others, walks are limited in time not to exceed 2
hours and done in the courtyard, and in the winter - autumn season, walks are not provided,
usually due to a lack of warm clothing, despite the fact that from the words of patients
surveyed in an institution, a sufficient amount of humanitarian aid is received.
National Centre of the Kyrgyz Republic on the Prevention of Torture
| 63
Select target paragraph3
Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents