The Moscow Hospital was the only psychotherapy department for cancer patients in the city. Now they are closed: the city hall has no money for this

In the Moscow Bakhrushin hospital in recent years, the department of psychotherapy for cancer patients has been working. This is normal Western practice

In 1994, a small department of psychotherapy appeared in the Moscow Hospital named after the Bakhrushin brothers on Stromyn. In the past seven years, it has largely reoriented to work with patients with cancer. According to Meduza, the head of Oksana Chverev, this happened due to the fact that she and other psychologists constantly observed how patients against the background of the disease have a variety of psychological consequences, problems and disorders - from difficulties in communication with the doctor to fail to undergo treatment and suicidal impulses.

“Psychological assistance to cancer patients is extremely important, because in our country this diagnosis is shrouded in a monstrous number of myths,” says Olga Goldman, director of the psychological assistance service to the cancer patients. - When a person finds out that he has cancer, he even more exacerbates his condition that torments him terribly and harasses himself. In addition, cancer treatment is very painful in emotionally tolerate women; They often have depression. " According to Goldman, in some Western countries there is systemic psychotherapeutic assistance to cancer - but in Russia the state has not yet worried about this, and if such assistance appears, then on the initiative of the doctors themselves.

CHEVVIVIVE says that the Bakhrushin hospital is the only city hospitals where people with oncology were offered psychotherapy.

From the new year, the department is closed. The head says that she was offered to engage in the help of cancer patients "in her free time from the main job"

According to CHILEVIEV, in early November 2018 she received a notification from the leadership of the hospital. It reported that the psychotherapy department, which it leads, will soon be closed, and they will no longer provide appropriate assistance to patients with oncology in the hospital.

“They said that this is due to the fact that psychotherapeutic assistance is not paid from the compulsory medical insurance fund, but there is no money in the city budget,” Chviveleva explains. By that time, abbreviations were already held in the department - and besides it, only two medical psychologists worked there on an ongoing basis. Chwilieva herself, according to her, was offered to take another position that was not connected with the help of oncopacients, and was allowed to engage in their previous work "in their free time from the main work." She refused, and from January 1 she will be fired.

Medical psychologists will remain to work in the hospital - however, according to Chiviliev, after its departure, the structure of the work will break: doctors will not be able to send patients to the department because he will not have a manager; Without a psychotherapist, a medical psychologist will not be able to prescribe drug therapy. In her opinion, non -core psychologists will not be able to fully help patients with oncology who have psychological problems. “Recently, a patient who had visited a psychologist had come to us with suicidal thoughts,” says Chvivelev. “This is not because the psychologist did not work, but because the specific situation, requiring certain skills and experience.”

The patients of the hospital require not to close the department of psychotherapy. The city authorities assure that nothing bad is happening

About a hundred former and current patients of the psychotherapy department signed a petition with a request not to close it (in total, under the petition, they have already signed more than 110 thousand times). One of the former patients, Lyudmila Vorobyova, told Medusa that the hospital psychotherapists helped her to get out of a depressive state after she was operated on last year - the woman had breast cancer. “I was brought to the ward after the operation: one neighbor did not talk to me at all, the other lay face to the wall all the time,” recalls Vorobyov. -And Oksana Viktorovna [Chverev] invited me to art therapy. It saved me then, we can say. ” Vorobyova attended classes for four months - according to her, this helped her from the other side look at her situation and find new friends.

The head of the Health Department Alexei Khripun commented on the situation on the official website of the department on November 29. The official said that “on the termination of the provision of advisory and therapeutic psychotherapeutic assistance to cancer patients in the Bakhrushin brothers hospital,” we are not talking about, “changes are technical and will not affect the process of providing medical care.” They did not want to answer the questions of Medusa about the dismissal of Chverev in the department, having sent a comment on the site.

Irina Kravtsova