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Mental health in Russia is covered by a law, known under its official name—the Law of the Russian Federation “On Psychiatric Care and Guarantees of Citizens’ Rights during Its Provision”; , ''Zakon Possiyskoy Federatsii "O psikhiatricheskoy pomoshchi i garantyakh prav grazhdan pri yeyo okazanii"''), which is the basic legal act that regulates psychiatric care in the Russian Federation and applies not only to persons with mental disorders but all citizens. An notable exception of this rule is those vested with parliamentary or judicial immunity. Providing psychiatric care is regulated by a special law regarding guarantees of citizens’s rights. Due to this fact, it is acknowledged that functions of psychiatry are not limited to identifying and removing biological anomalies that cause "mental illnesses", caring for patients and alleviating their sufferings, but they also apply to the scope of their civil rights. The passage of the law was one of the five conditions for the membership of the All-Union Society of Psychiatrists and Neuropathologists in the World Psychiatric Association.〔; 〕 The law passed on 2 July 1992 and received the number 3185-1.〔; 〕 == History == During the period of the Soviet Union, it was not considered reasonable to pass special legislative acts protecting the material and legal part of the patients’ mental health, thus leaving mental health services mainly inconsistent and unregulated. It was only guidelines of the legal and medical departments that stipulated certain rules of handling the mentally sick and imposing different sanctions on them. Two guidelines on the management of mentally ill persons were published in 1961 and 1971, respectively. These were prepared by lawyer Alexander Rudyakov, who was the legal adviser to the chief psychiatrist of the Moscow Oblast, and read that the grounds for urgent hospitalization was when an ill person was of social danger. Up until 1988, psychiatry in the USSR was not regulated by laws, there were only departmental guidelines, especially those of the USSR Ministry of Health, and one article in the ''Fundamentals of Health Legislation of the USSR''. Vague wordings in the guidelines led to their wide and arbitrary application, which was fully in the hands of psychiatrists. In the absence of legal control over the actions of doctors, departmental regulation of mental health care has contributed to psychiatric abuse. Only in the beginning of 1988, the USSR adopted the ''Statute on Conditions and Procedures for the Provision of Psychiatric Assistance'', which has been the first legal act in this field and has certainly played a positive role for Soviet psychiatry.〔; 〕 However, the 1988 ''Statute'' did not fully protect the rights of citizens falling into the field of activity of psychiatry, did not fully protect the mentally ill, did not contain developed mechanisms for legal control over the actions of psychiatrists and did not conform to the USSR Constitution and international standards. In Russia, the enactment of the law took place under dramatic circumstances, even with the consideration that there was an 80-year delay for any mental health legislation and given the fact that political abuse of psychiatry was unprecedentedly widespread and denied for two decades from 1968 to 1988. When Soviet rule was coming to an end, the decision to develop a law on mental health was made by senior officials and under the threat of economic sanctions from the United States. An initiator of creating a serious, detailed mental health law in the USSR was a deputy of the last convocation of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, a young engineer from a Uralian town. When asked why he as an engineer needs it, he replied to Semyon Gluzman, "All this democracy will soon run out, guys who will come to power, will start repression, and you, Dr. Gluzman, and I will have a hard time. So let's at least get these guys blocked from this possibility and adopt a civilized law eliminating the possibility of psychiatric repression!"〔 The Law was developed with the participation of psychiatrists involved in political abuse of psychiatry. At a meeting held by the Health Committee of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in the autumn of 1991, the Law was approved, particularly in the speeches by the four members of the commission of the World Psychiatric Association, but this event was followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As its result, the work on the draft of the Mental Health Law automatically ceased. In 1992, a new commission was created under the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation and used a new concept of developing the Law; a quarter of the commission members were the representatives of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia (IPA). The main developer of the Law was Svetlana Polubinskaya of the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Polubinskaya was the sole lawyer in the commission of psychiatrists for developing the Law and lodged a categorical protest against including other lawyers in the commission. The Supreme Soviet of Russia passed the Law on 2 July 1992. The Law has been in force since 1 January 1993.〔; 〕 For the first few years, the Law was defied, seen by the doctors as an undue burden and was not let known to the patients. In 1993, when the IPA printed the Law in 50 thousand copies for the general reader, quite a number of heads of the Moscow psychoneurologic dispensaries refused to circulate the Law. Over time, these difficulties were overcome. It became obligatory to know the Law to pass the certification exam. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mental health in Russia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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