Minister Calls For Whistleblowers of Psychiatric Facilities to call Police

The Minister of Health, Armen Muradyan, advised whistleblowers to reach out to law enforcement when hearing about human rights violations at psychiatric facilities, especially cases when patients are hit or were forced to work. The Minister spoke about the situation of psychiatric facilities in the National Assembly while commenting on a question by an Epress.am journalist about the results of an investigation done by human rights defenders at six psychiatric facilities.

Recall, the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor office released report about psychiatric facilities, concluded that 84 out of 136 patients said that they were subject to physical deterrence and 75 said that they were subject to forced labor.

“Such statements are considered to imply about a criminal act. The whistleblowers must inform law enforcement. Or if they are stating that the psychiatric facility’s director has privatized the patient’s apartment or the patient has been beaten or of other human rights violations, we will follow those issues,” said the Minister.

The Minister assured that he gave the psychiatric directors clear instructions to apply to the courts demanding compensation for medical misconduct, and demand to present the statement’s basis. “If they don’t deny that such incidents occur, of course, there will be an appropriate administrative decision and a criminal decision at once if those statements are confirmed by the side of law enforcement,” said Armen Muradyan.

To the question of whether such a human rights violation has been revealed and that if staff members have been punished for it, the minister said that the psychiatric activities will be stricter, reports are being prepared, while administrative fines are sanctioned when their work is insufficient to the demands.

Referring to the question, that human rights defenders often criticize the psychiatric facilities patient’s lack of necessary expensive medicine, Muradyan answered, “the issue of technical upgrades at the psychiatric facilities is a global issue. It is not possible to continue to manipulate the issue. Continuing to manipulate it is not realistic, or it gives room to think that there is a tendentious approach to the issue.”