According to the Ministry of Public Health, there are 284,700 mentally handicapped people in Ukraine, 88,000 of whom are listed as disabled; this figure includes 18,439 children. This is the third largest group of disabled people in this country. These disabilities are usually life-long. Countries that are popularly referred to as civilized have introduced certain systems to protect their rights and annually observe World Mental Health Day on October 10 (read an upcoming issue of The Day for comments from experts). For the first time in Ukraine, on the initiative of the All-Ukrainian Coalition to Defend the Rights of the Mentally and Physically Disabled, this day will be marked by a wide range of public events as part of the nationwide direct action called “Everyone Is Different, Everyone Is Equal.” Addressing the Zhytomyr Reform Press Club, psychologist Diana Bondar, who is a member of the coalition’s board, said that this action should draw public and governmental attention to the necessity of creating a social adaptation system for the mentally handicapped in Ukraine. She announced that signatures are being collected for an open petition to President Viktor Yushchenko, Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, and Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov, which will emphasize that after joining this year’s European Mental Health Declaration, our state should meet the obligations set out in this document, including the right of a handicapped person to choose a place of residence. “We are still drawing our government’s attention to the fact that, apart from specialized psychiatric institutions, there is not a single hostel-type house or special social support workplace in this country for these types of individuals. Many of them are deprived of the right to education,” Bondar says. On Oct. 9 Khreshchatyk Street in Kyiv will be the venue of an event dubbed “Khodoton” by the organizers, which will include special photography exhibits, a relay race, an exhibition and sale of items made by handicapped children, and a collection of signatures for the petition. Mentally handicapped people will also put on a gala concert. The next day Ukraine’s first mini-hostel will be opened.
Coalition members insist that families that are raising these kinds of children on their own must be given adequate support; they also defend the right of handicapped children to attend mainstream schools. Bondar, who is also a member of the Zhytomyr city charitable society that assists families of psychiatric patients, told The Day that families that do not send their children to special boarding schools should be paid not 320 hryvnias a month, as is the case now, but 700-800 hryvnias, i.e., the current cost of their upkeep in a psychiatric institution. She claims that she has succeeded in teaching her own child many things necessary for at least partial self-sufficiency, which a boarding school could hardly succeed in doing. The official side is also right in its own way: Volodymyr Kaidansky, chief expert at the General Department of Labor and Social Security of Zhytomyr oblast, also thinks that it would be better if society provided assistance to families that care for mentally handicapped children and even adults with amounts that are equivalent to the cost of their upkeep in special institutions. However, he is convinced that children develop better in the company of their peers and claims that good conditions have been created in the region’s four specialized boarding schools with 370 children and four special institutions that house 1,175 adults. According to Viktor Shumliansky, president of the Association of Ukrainian Psychiatrists and head of Zhytomyr’s Psychiatric Hospital No. 1, Ukraine should establish regional centers that would apply a systematic approach. These centers would not only diagnose mental illnesses in vitro and grant parents the right to decide whether to continue the pregnancy but would also provide treatment, rehabilitation, and social adaptation for people suffering from various forms of such diseases and mental retardation. Shumliansky believes that this will only be possible if our society attains the European level of attitudes toward the mentally handicapped. One can only hope that this process will not drag on for years.
