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The Investigative Committee of Russia on Thursday confirmed the death of six residents of the Psychoneurological Boarding School No. 10 in St. Petersburg. A criminal case has been filed for involuntary manslaughter – due to improper performance of patient care duties.
The day before the death of seven residents of this PNI, the founder of the hospice aid fund “Vera”, Nyuta (Anna) Federmesser, addressed the authorities in a video address. According to her, she had previously approached the City Committee for Social Policy with a request to pay attention to the situation in the boarding house. According to Federmesser, all the deceased were severely emaciated, the staff didn’t have enough hands to care for them, and they allegedly refused help from PNI volunteers. After her video appeal, the St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation. Later, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case. The ICRC stresses that all six of the dead were adults.
“Recipients of social services”. BBC special correspondent Anastasia Lotareva – about people deprived of rights in PNI. The founder of the “Vera” Foundation, the member of the All-Russian Popular Front and the famous Russian philanthropist Nyuta Federmesser names the six deceased wards of the Psychoneurological Boarding School No. 10 in St. Petersburg as: Ira, Ksyusha, Tanya, Mischa, Marina, Oleg.
We explain quickly, simply, and clearly what happened, why it matters, and what happens next. The number of offers should remain: Episodes End of story. Podcast advertising. Lesha – who died later than everyone else, and whose dire situation Federmesser had already reported to the city authorities, but who still could not save him.
The first time I went to the psychiatric and neurological internment camp to write an article, I heard at the reception desk: “Are you going to the ‘psushkas’?” I asked again, and they explained: “Psushkas” is a shortened form of “social welfare recipients.” Dehumanized and completely disenfranchised people who live in huge institutions or DDIs (homes for disabled children). PNI’s and DDI’s stand on the outskirts of cities, becoming “system-building enterprises” for settlements. Sometimes they are literally down the street from your house – but you will never know it, because the inhabitants of these drab buildings will never step outside the fence that surrounds them.
For many years, Russian public figures have been trying to reform psychiatric institutions. The same is true for Federmesser. Even the famous actor and head of the “I am!” foundation, Egor Beroev, asked Russian President Vladimir Putin about this during the “Direct Line” in 2019. Reform means stopping building large buildings and locking up hundreds of people in them, leaving them under the full control of underpaid and burnt out staff. To establish a system of “supported living” (this is when a person with mental disabilities lives under the supervision of social workers or guardians, but independently and not in a ward with six people). In 2021, BBC Russian Service wrote about how it works and told stories of people who had escaped from prison, where they ended up without any guilt, and how their lives (and not “a meaningless existence”) began.
Two years later, Nuta Federmesser, a person with considerable influence and connections to the authorities, is forced to write video appeals in order to be heard (and emphasizes that she does it “without coordinating with anyone from the leadership”). A good actor and philanthropist, Egor Beroev, “supports the SVR and considers himself, to a certain extent, its participant”. Every day, thousands of people across Russia find themselves in inhumane conditions in internats. Behind fences, without any attention from society. It seems that the long-awaited reform of the system of orphanages and psychoneurological institutions will not take place. Lesha Delvari, who died of multiple organ failure alone, without a family, among tiled walls and unfamiliar voices at the reception of the Alexandrovskaya Hospital, didn’t really expect it.
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