The system calls of people living in psycho-neurological boarding schools, recipients of social services. It robs them of any civil rights, even the right to tell their story. Incapacitation is called civil death. But sometimes the system fails and “recipients” there is a small chance to rise again. And the people who belong to the state, trying to regain his life.
Photo: Stepan Rudik, project “Other”/ stepanrudik.com
- STUMPS – it’s as if you’re partially erased with a sheet of paper
- Need to get out of paradigms that with the orphanages we are all well
- “I was in the STUMPS near St. Petersburg, and it’s hell. More than a thousand shadows”
- “At least we spiral put, and where-they just sterilize”
- The constitutional court will consider the complaint of discrimination is dysfunctional in the STUMPS
Yury Kalinin and his daughter Yulia Kalinina filed a complaint to the constitutional court practice of the Supreme court and courts of General jurisdiction, violate the rights of living in psycho-neurological boarding schools. Yulia was found incompetent mother on the application and placed into the STUMPS. The father, who only found out now, not allowed to see his daughter outside the walls of the institution.
Director Olga sinyaeva said that so are thousands of people across the country. She wanted to make films-portraits and tell the world about them, but it turned out that the people trapped in STUMPS, have no right even to their own image. Now she wants to save at least one person – Nikolay Shipilov. He’s 28, six years he lives in the orphanage and is struggling for capacity.
7 cigarettes a day for the blazers
The first time I got to the STUMPS, when he wanted to remove Nicholas Shipilov. He recently wrote to Alexander Gezalova, asked him to find a guardian. Without a guardian to him of the STUMPS were in the air. With these shots we were going to start a new project for the residents of psychoneurological boarding “unbroken faith.”
What STUMPS I saw just shocked me. When you pass by such institutions, quite ordinary in appearance, just behind the fence, no idea what’s going on inside. Yes, and the first floors of these institutions more and more resemble a regular school or clinic. But already climbing the stairs, you begin to experience unexplained anxiety.
Olga Sinyaeva
The first thing that hits the senses is the smell. Everything is clean, almost sterile, but the air remains suspended from the mixture of bleach, feces, blood, sweat, pain and fear. On the non-verbal level of experiencing something that literally paralyzes the psyche. You’re scared just to be there, even knowing that soon you will return to a normal life.
Then you call bell on the floor, screaming, who are you and from whom, and someone out there with a key that opens the door. Matron looks with distrust. Out of the corner with a surprised look men. The floor is completely male. All the movements they have slowed down. The people there are under the strong influence of psychoactive substances, so do not leave the impression that you stand among the living dead. Many have gross violations, some of the psyche is undermined and turned into ruins due to drug abuse, alcohol, continuous use of antipsychotics, which is indicated by an unsteady gait, constrained movements.
For Breakfast, lunch and dinner, their drive systems. Horror when passing you on the column of men in identical plaid flannel shirts. “Cellular”, as they call themselves. They go silently to each other, looking right through you.
Go like doing an important job, heavy shuffling steps carry his burden – his body – to the dining room and back.
Just like “cellular” column, I first saw Kolya Shipilova. He was different from all: young, cute, look he was alive. Nick actually rushed at me, hugged me. I was overcome by a feeling that there is a fire and people on fire. We need to save, time to think not. Even before filming, it did not come. I immediately wrote 12 statements that they gave me and we went outside.
Kohl’s for the first time was on the outside, because walking there do not go. KICK in mainly two activities: watch TV and go to the Smoking room. All events in the gym they are taken centrally. To Smoking as a separate ritual of staying fit very seriously, intently going into the Smoking-room as if for work, and this is just a small balcony with bars.
They almost all smoke. It’s like a breath of freedom. Smoke can be, because nicotine is partly neutralizes the anti-psychotics. Cigarettes, like medicines, are given to all everyday. Behind them stands a silent place. That KICK was allowed to smoke more than 7 cigarettes a day. Each pack is written the name of the person they belong to. Everything is under control.
Photo: Stepan Rudik, project “Other”/ stepanrudik.com
People trapped on the floors. Floor just male or female, or a KICK, which is designed for 800 men. Just imagine: eight hundred men, was locked. But it’s at the top and on the lower floors of a boarding school – a normal kind of life: offices of the chief, his deputies, full of life, laughter, papers come and go in some people and does not hit in the horror film, which will pick up on. This contrast is shocking.
I somehow accidentally came to celebrate the 55th anniversary of one KICK. On the anniversary came women from other orphanages, with high hair, bright makeup, the bags they carried their evening dresses. In the auditorium made a real holiday. Down music, balloons, happy faces, and the floor above the locked people, column shuffling to the dining room with iron bowls.
Masha, who for 20 years did not go over the fence STUMPS
In the project “unbroken faith” we were going to make films-portraits about the people who are STUMPS, to the society know about them. So opened children’s homes. Orphans at the time was almost classified, the orphanage, tightly closed, and seemed impossible to break this high fence. Now children can come to the adoptive parents, mentors, children write, shoot, there are photos and videoankety, the Federal database of orphans. Maybe not all properly arranged, but nevertheless, at the moment only it gives children a chance to get into the family.
With older people in boarding schools the situation is the same as it was 15 years ago in children’s homes – a society of these people know nothing, they are hidden behind the high fence. We wanted to tell about the modern KICK to give them the opportunity to leave, even for a walk, and some would be quite possible to find friends, guardians, employers, and so to return to a normal life.
Once in STUMPS us with Gasanovym literally rushed to meet a middle-aged man with a stifled cry and a plea in her eyes: “Help, I’m capable, normal, I want out! And my brother, though, and believes in God, but does not take”. But unfortunately, our requests to show films-portraits about these people nor the Department of social protection or STUMPS is not really answered.
People living in psycho-neurological boarding schools, recipients of social services, as they call them on the state language, so not your own that still don’t even have the right to their own image. We continue our project, we continue to remove children with special needs, but adults show yet.
Managed to remove one of the video profile about the woman Gale, which, having no psychiatric diagnosis, more than 20 years in the STUMPS.
Galya has a mild form of epilepsy, at the time, she had been drinking, which, of course, brought some inconvenience to the family. Birth mother decided to put it into the STUMPS to get rid of the problems at the same time selling an apartment with her shares.
Over 20 years in the system this woman went through hell. She was sent for compulsory treatment, although no crime was committed, did not kill anyone and not be there had. She was deprived of legal capacity without her knowledge, and to this day she’s living in a boarding school.
When we first went out, I took her to McDonald’s, accompanied by a social worker, and she for the first time in 20 years tried fast food.
As she remembered life before STUMPS, around all these years, she imagined. She dreamed of mother-of-pearl lipstick, wanted to make a vertical chemistry – all that was fashionable in the 90s, has remained true to her.
In the end, the movie about the Gal we do not have the ability to show people. Only in court. Courts for restoration of legal capacity is still very long and bureaucratic process. After tons of paperwork not seen the person, and we want this man to judge the show. The judge failed to see how the Gal actually lives.
In Galina STUMPS have a small Church. In our film a woman who cares for her, tells how Gal prays daily as it helps bedridden patients. She calls it “the Tick”, and is a diminutive name pronounced with such warmth in his voice could make the humanity in this harsh process sudoproizvodstva.
Last year, Galya has passed the examination in Alekseevskaya hospital. The doctors concluded that she needs care, although I know she is not only able to take care of myself, but all the time help other guests STUMPS. I can testify how well it cleaned. At home she helped me when I invited her to visit.
After the conclusion of such examination Galya cried for a week, couldn’t understand why everything is so unfair. Unfortunately, everything is built in such a way that psychiatrists almost never think about the person here and now, and most maintain the “Esprit de corps”, agreeing with what is written in the conclusions, often many years ago, with “concerned” relatives.
Galya realized my problem, which led her to KICK, but she does not deserve prison without any crime. A huge part of her young life did not return. The relationship with the only daughter lost. Sisters and mother don’t speak anymore. I do not know what you have to do to deserve such a fate: to be deprived of all their civil rights without the right change, because neither marry, nor birth, nor eat what he wants or to go out she is already 20 years can not.
Pnina samsara, or the territory of timelessness
Nick Shipilov was in the institution for more than 5 years and from the beginning tried to restore capacity.
When he tried to recover the rights of their own, the psychiatrists told him that we need three years to get into a psychiatric hospital (although no there is no such law). But don’t get to a hospital within the system is impossible, because the person for itself solves nothing. Suddenly the doctor felt that it should be sent to a psychiatric hospital, and all. In the circles of this Presnoy of samsara to spin endlessly. Kolya is a very good lawyer Yury Yershov, social activists, journalists, without such support to capacity almost impossible.
I personally only know of capable people who managed to get out of STUMPS. But it all comes more news and incapacitated. In our groups in social networks about people tell. Of course, it is extremely difficult. As the heroine of my film, they get stuck in their timelessness, they have to fight with the symptoms of hospitalism and deprivation.
Learned helplessness is very difficult to live alone. Social ties these people destroyed, the family is waiting for them, so they need the support and assistance of people of good will.
Galia told me about her friend who long lived in PNI and which finally returned to capacity. This woman too long fought for the ability to live independently, and when he got freedom, she just has no strength left to live, she fell into a depression.
To closed conditions people also, unfortunately, get used to it. If from a circus or zoo animals release into nature, they will not be able to adapt and will probably perish. Wild comparison, but people locked up in boarding schools, too, lose their adaptive and social skills. Maria Sineva and its movement “Stop KICK” a lot of work to prepare “graduates STUMPS” to the exit, but the huge STUMPS city of 150,000 people help is clearly not enough. If we are not able to speak openly about these people and their show, you will not be able to attract new help.
Photo: Stepan Rudik, project “Other”/ stepanrudik.com
To attract volunteers without broad awareness-raising campaigns impossible. Deters many myths and stereotypes that people in boarding schools completely crazy and inappropriate. I saw the same people as we are, just due to the difficult life circumstances, sometimes criminal, sometimes tragic, they are admitted into institutions and forced to live there. Stroke, accident, fraud with apartments – from falling into the STUMPS, no one is immune. Tomorrow and this hell could become someone’s reality.
Requires disaggregated huge companies, to make people from boarding schools lived, as in all civilized countries, with organized support, followed by accommodation. People with disabilities have to go back to our lives. From this we will become a healthier society, seeing, finally, that people are different. Mental disorders is also not a sentence, sharp will also be able to stop in medical institutions, and this does not mean that people with mental features need to be locked up, deprived of all human rights.