U.S. Psychiatrists Arrive for 1st Tour of Soviet Hospitals

For the first time ever, a team of American psychiatrists has arrived here to tour previously off-limits Soviet psychiatric hospitals, question patients and assess allegations that dissidents have been drugged and silenced under the guise of being insane.

The Americans, whose trip is sponsored by the State Department, will question 25 to 30 patients and former patients whose cases have been considered controversial, said Dr. Loren H. Roth, who heads the team.

“No one could ever be confident that we were seeing all patients” who might have been hospitalized for political reasons, Roth told reporters Monday, “but these are the patients whose cases are perhaps best known.”

Roth, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh’s Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, declined to identify those who will be questioned.

Abuse Common in 1970s

For decades there have been reports of alleged Soviet psychiatric abuse, and although the Communist Party has always denied the reports, a Moscow psychiatrist recently acknowledged that such abuses were common in the 1970s.

Mikhail I. Buyanov, writing in the education newspaper Uchitelskaya Gazeta, said some patients were hospitalized simply “for giving their opinion,” but he said officials still had not fully acknowledged mistakes.

The Americans’ unprecedented two-week visit comes at a time of political sensitivity in the Soviet Union over the issue of human rights.

The Soviet psychiatric society is seeking to rejoin the World Psychiatric Assn., from which it withdrew in 1983 rather than be expelled for allegedly confining political prisoners to mental hospitals.

Although the Americans emphasized that their mission was not to assess Soviet eligibility for readmission to the association, their report is likely to influence that group, which is to meet in October in Athens.

1991 Conference Planned

Also, the Soviet Union hopes to organize an international human rights conference here in 1991, and a favorable report from the Americans could help clear the way for that.

The State Department, citing the unprecedented nature of the visit, has said the Americans will not make public their travel plans or talk with the media until the end of their visit.

A Soviet official told reporters last week that the Americans will see that President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reform policies have improved psychiatric treatment.

“They will be given the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the system of psychiatric help in the U.S.S.R. and the positive changes taking place in this area,” said Yuri Reshetov, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Department of International Humanitarian Cooperation and Human Rights.

The American team has been given case histories on most of the patients it intends to question, although one senior member of the team, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been “some disappointment in terms of the speed with which those records were delivered.”

Delay on Records

He said it was too early to say whether the Soviets had trouble locating and copying the material or had intentionally delayed giving it to the Americans.

In addition to interviewing the patients, the Americans will conduct urinalysis tests to determine whether the patients are currently being given drugs.

Five former Soviet citizens are among the visiting Americans, and they will ensure that “the examination has some degree of cultural sensitivity,” Roth said.

The Soviet-born doctors, some of whom were trained here, will interview the patients in Russian. Simultaneous English interpretation will be provided for those who speak no Russian. Afterward, all will have a chance to question the patients through an interpreter.

Under the terms of the Soviet-American agreement, Soviet psychiatrists will either attend the sessions or will be allowed to meet afterward with the American doctors and the patients. In addition, the team plans to visit four Soviet psychiatric hospitals and question patients at random.

Members of the team said there was some concern that psychiatric patients who spoke frankly might be punished later, but they hoped the fact that the team is publishing a report on the cases would provide some protection.

A group of Soviet psychiatrists will likely pay a return visit to the United States, providing that “all goes forward in a successful manner on this visit,” a Western diplomat said.