Siberian village gives hope to mentally ill

04 July, 2008, 03:00

Russia's Irkutsk region in Eastern Siberia is perhaps best known as the home of Lake Baikal – the largest and oldest freshwater lake in the world. But a unique psychiatric clinic, based in a village in the Siberian region, is also attracting positive attention.

Lost in the Siberian woods, Bakanay feels nothing like a hospital. There you won’t find any fences or guards. It looks like an ordinary village, with its own gardens and cattle. And those who live there aren’t even called patients – they are simply villagers.

The village is part of a regional psychiatric centre based some 30 kilometres away. The innovation, also popular in Europe, was started in the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Patients with mental disorders in remission swapped their hospital wards for a life and work in the countryside.

There used to be several villages like this across the former USSR. But while most didn’t survive the fall of the Soviet Union, Bakanay keeps going – now home to 33 patients.

Dr. Ivan Pastukhov, Head of Department says: “They are always busy doing different things. They simply don’t have the time to turn into coach potatoes”.

Although many get a state pension, the villagers live off the land and learn to rely on themselves. They garden, chop wood and graze cows.

They’ve even built their own chapel, where they can also do what they like most.

For 54-year-old Olga it’s knitting. Her collection of kittens, puppies and folk-tale characters grows by the day. Olga’s been at Bakanay for the past eight years. Although she has no hope of a full recovery, her puppies and kittens have become part of the treatment which keeps her bouts of illness at bay.

Few there have tried to run away. Many stay on even after they’ve recovered well enough to leave full-time medical care. Some say they don’t want to be anywhere else. Others have no other family or home to go to.

Nadezhda Panezhda, Head Nurse says: “For newcomers, working here is hard. But as we begin to understand their life and problems, it’s important to remember deep in your heart that they’re people just like us.”