To whom is spring and to whom the diagnosis

Sasha Nelyuba continues to talk about the intricacies of Russian charity and volunteering - this time her ward orphan was thrown into a psychiatric hospital, because spring. Why do Russian children need pencils for coloring?

On the street it finally heats up, the sun is increasingly shining directly in the eye when I sit in front of the window at the computer. We survived another winter, it is time to wake up, take off the upper layers of clothes, walk the streets, return to life after depressive winter hibernation. I have a birthday in the spring, I have to rejoice. True, for a year now, spring does not begin very joyfully for me. And it's not about vitamin deficiency.

Last Saturday, I had to lead my colleague on an open day at a boarding school for orphans. Yes, in such institutions there are also open days of open doors, in Moscow they are called “Aista Day” (very funny, yes).

The essence of these events is to show the public that everything is good and great in the custody system, the children are happy, the educators are happy, the volunteers are happy, the administration is happy, only sheer joy and happiness. Well, to attract people to the design of guardianship and adoption, of course. And if now this has a practical meaning, after the conditions of guardianship and adoption have changed (in a century for the better), then earlier everything looked like a complete absurdity.

So, neither I nor my colleague on the day of the stork came this year. Because my ward once again went to a psychiatric hospital.

We have known Katya not so long ago, from the New Year. Our relationship is built hard and with a creak. She is sixteen years old, she already has experience in abandoning the foster family, with whom she did not want to live, after which she returned to the boarding school, the previous volunteer also refused her. Katya has a complex character, problems with motivation (there is practically no one), with interest in the outside world (he is also not), she smokes, often lies, walks lessons, and not for the sake of any more interesting lesson-she just wishes around the school. At the same time, she is kind, loves animals, especially dogs, I can’t say that she has a conscious desire and desire to help others, but there is some non -resistance, lack of aversion to help. Therefore, she willingly and disinterestedly undertake to help.

In general, Katya is good. Just complicated. Of course, she, like most children from dysfunctional families who spent most of her life in orphan institutions, have certain diagnoses. When at first I was desperately trying to come up with some kind of joint activity for us, Katya refused everything. She was not interested. At some point, I suggested going to the cinema.
“No, the movie is long, I’ll fall asleep there,” Katya dismissed my offer.
- Is it so that the darkness acts on you? I joked.
“No, this is how Aminazin acts,” she answered in serious seriousness.

Katya is cut very briefly, wears a boyish hedgehog with a shaved nape.
“Did you choose such a haircut yourself?”
- Well, the first time they shaved me in a psychiatric hospital. There just one girl had lice, we were all shaved, so that they would not become infected. And then I liked it, conveniently. And the cakes do not climb into the face.
- How did you end up in the hospital?
-Yes, they just didn’t let me smoke after the end, I got out through the window to smoke on the roof, and someone saw, and everyone decided that I wanted to jump.

I don’t know how much truth is in this story, but I know for sure that if Katya wanted to smoke, nothing will stop her.

Katya promised to me that she would speak with others at the bottom of the stork, most likely, would sing. In early April, we had to go to the training for future employment and choice of profession. This is important for children like her. The psychologist who oversees our couple advised us to visit a dog shelter as a joint activity, and several volunteers responded on Facebook on my cry. But all these plans will have to be postponed for a month or even longer. Because spring began, the educators began to be rebuilt and send the children to psychiatric hospitals. Who is planned, who is “for prevention”, and whom and for bad behavior. You can change the numbers of boarding schools for funny names (I’m not joking now), call groups that are divided into boarding schools, “families” can be rebuilt from corridor-type blocks (in which rooms were called by wards and nothing could be stored on nightstands) in family-type apartments (rooms for two to three people, kitchen, living room, bathrooms, everything is like people). But the spring outcome of children from boarding schools in the psychiatric hospital will probably never end.

I have something to compare with. Katya is not my first ward from an orphanage. Almost five years ago, Valera appeared in my life. For those three years that we talked with him in the walls of the boarding school, I have seen a lot. And one shower gel, which is issued for ten people, when they go to wash at a certain time. And the lack of deodorants among fifteen -year -old boys (I immediately understood what has always been so smelled there), and life is building on schedule, and the lessons of patriotism instead of normal training, and, of course, a psychiatric hospital.

Since then, much has changed. The systems of boarding schools are reformed, the buildings themselves are rebuilt, the segregation of children to the “norm” and “correction” is smoothed out, children of different sexes and age are combined into one “family” (they used to live in class, that is, all of the same age), now everyone can go washed when he wants. Children began to take children more often in foster families under guardianship. Even teenagers. Even with diagnoses. So, for example, happened to Valera.

But every spring, the children continue to "leave". I will not undertake to dispute the diagnoses. Although I can say that, for example, Valera, as soon as he got into the foster family, all sorts of “exacerbations” and “breakdowns” instantly stopped. Apart from the case when he has dehumed the labor teacher. Which, as far as I know, during puberty sometimes occurs with ordinary children from prosperous families.

And two years ago, in the spring, I received a power of attorney to visit Valera in a psychiatric hospital. In order to get to him with this power of attorney, I went to the end station of the metro, landed on the bus and rode in the direction of the region for forty minutes, after forty minutes the driver landed me in the middle of the forest, waved his hand to the side and said: “You will see two kilometers later.”

After two kilometers, I left the forest to the village. To my question "Where is the hospital here?" The tipsy local resident clarified: "Psyche that or what?" And he explained that here on the bridge through the stream, there is a little more through the wasteland, then straight through the trees and “reproach”. I rested on a concrete wall with barbed wire. At the checkpoint, the guard studied my power of attorney for a long time, for some reason rubbed a photograph in my passport with a clogged finger, rummaged carefully in my backpack , looked critically, but did not dare to feel. And thank you for that.

When to me, sitting on a pseudo -coat, a sofa near the guard in the main corps was taken out Valera, it smelled very badly. With sour cerekovo meal, then, something else elusively hospital and, it seems, uncleaned teeth. As he later told me, he forgot to take the toothbrush, but you can’t clean it with his finger. He generally did not take anything with himself at that time, even read any book. Because he was told that it was not for long. Just look and back. Examination. He stuck there at that time for three weeks.

I did not know what he left and for a long time, so I brought him quite a bit-delicious ones and a magazine-painting about “people x”. Then the new episode came out and the old ones turned the old ones. Forty minutes we sat next to him on the sofa. Under the views of the guard and nurse. Valera solved the crossword puzzle, I hugged him. Then he took him back. The delicious and coloring were allowed to take with them, but there are no pencils. Why is a child coloring without pencils? Ask something easier.

I don’t know whether non-aggressive children are needed, even with diagnoses, even in the spring, to tear off from the usual circle of communication, from the educational process (some kind of) and send them for the barbed wire only so that they are given the same drugs there that they give every day in the boarding school. I don't know. But I doubt very much. And I'm waiting for the power of attorney to visit me to visit Katya.

PS: Samizdat “Batenka, you are a transformer” closely studies the state of affairs in domestic psychiatry. For example, we told you the story of a man who spent sixteen and a half years old in a psychiatric hospital, and about a man who was able to ruin from the army with prisoners in the hospital . If you have something to tell us - rather write.