Human Rights Monitoring in Psychiatric Hospitals

On May 26-30, HCA Vanadzor organized a 5-day training on “Human Rights in Psychiatric Hospitals.”

Six employees from HCA Vanadzor participated in the training conducted by Agnieska Klosowska from the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights.
  With the help of the trainer the participants of the training worked out the monitoring plan and defined the goals and objectives, as well as they developed the questionnaire for conducting the interviews and observations.
  The monitoring aims at revealing the situation of human rights in the psychiatric hospitals in Armenia and in case of necessity supporting its improvement.
  It is planned to conduct monitoring in all six hospitals in Armenia. HCA Vanadzor officially applied to RA Ministry of Healthcare and presented the monitoring plan and methods, the goals and objectives of the monitoring and got permission.
  After the monitoring it is planned to organize 4 public discussions with participation of representatives from the Ministry of Healthcare, psychiatric hospitals and HCA Vanadzor and then to publish a report.
  We have to remind that HCA Vanadzor conducted such monitoring in 2007 in Lori regional psychiatric hospital.
  “Human Rights in Psychiatric Hospitals” monitoring is implemented within the framework of the project “Capacity Building of HCA Vanadzor in the Sphere of Human Rights” with the financial support of Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation-Armenia, the Government of the Netherlands and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights.