{"id":275474,"date":"2016-11-08T20:36:49","date_gmt":"2016-11-08T16:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=275474"},"modified":"2016-11-09T13:44:34","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T09:44:34","slug":"psychiatric-commitment-in-armenia-mainly-used-for-punishment-purposes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2016\/11\/08\/psychiatric-commitment-in-armenia-mainly-used-for-punishment-purposes.html","title":{"rendered":"Psychiatric Commitment in Armenia Mainly Used for &#8216;Punishment&#8217; Purposes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t<span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">50 percent of the people in Armenian psychiatric facilities should not even be there as they have no mental health problems; they merely need social care, Artur Sakunts, the head of the Helsinki Citizens&rsquo; Assembly Vanadzor office, said on Tuesday, speaking at the Health and Human Rights conference in Yerevan.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIn Armenia, according to Sakunts, psychiatric commitment is quite often unjustified and is used as a punitive measure against political and civil society actors. &ldquo;The incident with civic activist <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2012\/03\/30\/man-protesting-outside-state-broadcaster-detained-by-police.html\"><span style=\"color:#000080;\">Yervand Karapetyan<\/span><\/a><\/strong> comes to mind, whom police took to a psychiatric facility for picketing outside the Armenian Public TV building.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&ldquo;Activist <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2016\/02\/24\/jailed-armenian-activist-taken-to-psychiatric-hospital.html\"><span style=\"color:#000080;\">Vardges Gaspari<\/span><\/a><\/strong>, for his part, was taken to a hospital for a psychiatric assessment after asking the investigator in his case whether he had been involved in the criminal proceedings in connection with the [post-election] incidents in March, 2008.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&ldquo;Human rights activist <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2016\/06\/03\/human-rights-activist-alleges-torture-and-harassment-at-yerevan-psychiatric-clinic.html\"><span style=\"color:#000080;\">Armine Arakelyan<\/span><\/a><\/strong> was taken to a mental clinic for staging a protest at the Republic Square&hellip;&rdquo; Sakunts recalled.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe human rights activist also noted that, according to the results of the monitoring carried out by HCAV in Armenia&#39;s mental facilities in 2007-2013, the majority of the psychiatric hospitals in the country were strict-regime, turning what should have been medical treatment into jail-like incarceration. &ldquo;Keeping people in closed psychiatric institutions almost always results in limitations of the patients&#39; basic human rights and freedoms,&rdquo; Sakunts said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe most commonly observed violations, Sakunts continued, were related to the justifications for citizens&#39; psychiatric commitment, the quality of the provided medication and the medical supplies and equipment used in their treatment. Armenia&#39;s mental institutions, he added, also limited the patients&#39; ability to communicate to the outside world and subjected them to inhuman or degrading treatment during the application of, often uncalled for, restraint measures.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tHCAV research has also shown that the majority of the patients in Armenian psychiatric facilities have been placed there without their consent. &ldquo;Incapacitated people are more vulnerable to involuntary commitment; they are often placed in mental institutions by their caregivers with the aim of punishing them or gaining possession of their property,&rdquo; the HCAV head stressed.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The most commonly observed violations, Sakunts continued, were related to the justifications for citizens&#8217; psychiatric commitment, the quality of the provided medication and the medical supplies and equipment used in their treatment&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":275464,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10,66033],"tags":[18552,54712,65731,65730],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275474"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}