Development & Aid, Europe, Headlines, Health, Human Rights

RIGHTS: Romania Asked to Address Psychiatric Abuses

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, May 4 2004 (IPS) - Amnesty International is warning of human rights issues in Romania, a candidate for the next wave of EU expansion.

Amnesty’s report ‘Memorandum to the Romanian Government Concerning Inpatient Psychiatric Treatment’ released Tuesday (May 4) which is based on field research in Romania, highlights how people in Romanian psychiatric hospitals are suffering a broad range of human rights violations and "being held in deplorable conditions."

The report says many people in psychiatric wards and hospitals apparently "do not suffer an acute mental disorder and many do not require psychiatric treatment." It adds that many are placed there "simply because they had no family or possibilities for reintegration, with appropriate support, into the community."

Amnesty says that this practice of placing people for involuntary psychiatric treatment "amounts to arbitrary detention and denial of fair trial rights." Inside many psychiatric wards Amnesty says that the "living conditions, diet and heating provisions are deplorable. Overcrowding in some hospitals resulted in patients having to share beds. In some instances patients shared beds as this was the only way to keep warm in unheated wards."

The report adds that physical abuse is also practised in many hospitals. "Restraint and seclusion practices in many psychiatric wards and hospitals were not in line with international standards and in some instances amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment," it says.

Earlier this year, 18 patients died in a psychiatric hospital reportedly as a result of malnutrition and hypothermia. Eighty-four patients died from similar causes in 2003.

The Centre for Legal Resources (Centrul de Resurse Juridice), a Romanian non-governmental organisation (NGO) which visited the hospital in February reported that some hospital staff "had expressed concern about the lack of funds to adequately care for the patients, who were hungry, poorly clothed, infested with lice and had inadequate bedding."

The report added: "The heating system does not appear to be used at the hospital, a former army barracks, in a region where temperatures frequently fall below freezing for days, sometimes weeks at a time between November and March."

Amnesty warns that such a tragedy "is not an exception in the Romanian mental healthcare system."

Irene Khan, Secretary-General of Amnesty, said in a statement Tuesday: "Today we appeal to the Romanian government to act with utmost urgency to protect the lives, dignity and well-being of all patients and residents in psychiatric hospitals in the entire country and urge the government to introduce a comprehensive and effective reform of the mental health services." Amnesty says that the only way to stop such abuses is "through enforcement of international human rights standards of particular relevance to people with mental disorders or intellectual disabilities as well as professional best practice in this field."

The human rights organisation also stresses that "the effective enforcement of many of these rights depends on a thorough and appropriate reform of the mental health care services."

Amnesty is also calling on the European Union (EU) to ensure its pre- accession funding to Romania – approximately 840 million dollars – is implemented in a way that guarantees "full respect for the rights of people with mental health problems or intellectual disabilities." Romania is expected to join the EU in 2007 at the earliest, and expects to conclude negotiations by the end of this year.

Khan added: "We call on the European Union to ensure that resources which may be made available to Romania, as an accession state, to improve its mental health care services are used with full respect for the rights of people with mental health problems or intellectual disabilities, including their right to be treated and cared for, as far as possible, in the community in which they live."

Amnesty says that the EU has "failed to take account of the many young adults from institutions which were closed down, who ended up being inappropriately transferred to psychiatric hospitals where they could languish for the rest of their lives."

Amnesty says the EU must "ensure that all those inappropriately placed in psychiatric hospitals are included in this programme of deinstitutionalisation so they are not overlooked for a second time."