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A report came out this week chronicling Romania's treatment of some of its most vulnerable – tens of thousands of mentally disabled children and adults shoveled into state facilities each year for lack of family or someone to take them in.
The report, done by Mental Disability Rights International, revealed continuing abuse of institutionalized children, even years after the country started to dismantle a system of segregating disabled minors from the rest of society. Any child or adult with a disability can be abandoned to an institution.
What does this mean? Well, mental institutions or other state facilities in the States would seem like paradise for the kids hidden away in Romanian orphanages and mental hospitals.
The Washington Post says: "Many children were so neglected they turned to self-destructive behavior. 'One child sat stabbing himself in the eyes during our entire visit,' the report said. … 'Some children were wrapped head to toe in bed sheets,' and when investigators lifted the sheets 'we found many children left sitting in their own urine and feces.'"
The problem isn't limited to Romania. I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Armenia, a former Soviet republic, from 2001-2004. One of my fellow volunteers took on the daunting task of working with the disabled and their families in her town in south Armenia. (Armenia is located north of Iran and south of Georgia – it is bordered by Turkey on the west.)
My friend Bridget quickly found that the ideology of Soviet times still permeates Armenian culture, as it does in many former Communist nations. The government placed people with disabilities and mental illness in institutions to keep them out of the public eye. To have a child with disabilities was considered shameful. What's more, the institutions did not provide individualized care or promote integration into society.
Euthanasia was also a common "solution" to the "problem" of caring for the disabled during Soviet times. As a result, psychiatric hospitals are to this day called "graveyards" (no lie – I speak Armenian, and this was common) by the general population. While euthanasia is no longer practiced, the stigma surrounding the disabled and mentally ill remains.
It is still common for parents to hide and neglect their children with disabilities or to abandon them all together by sending them to live in orphanages. When they turn 18, the children are often sent to the government-run psychiatric hospitals.
Though sometimes it's common for volunteers to do work while they are in country, and then call it good when they leave, Bridget and a newer volunteer were inspired to do something about the problem. They had developed strong relationships with a specific group of Armenian orphans, and dreaded seeing them sent to a psychiatric hospital where they would be neglected and left to sleep without mattresses, for example, and often without enough food. Armenia is cold – it is in the mountains – and most hospitals have no central heating and provide just thin blankets to stay warm.
Natalie, the newer volunteer, and Bridget created the first Armenian group home, which they named Warm Hearth, in a village outside Yerevan, Armenia's capital. Instead of being sent to a psychiatric hospital, eight Armenians with disabilities moved into the house this winter.
It's an incredible story. Natalie, whose brainchild the project was, and Bridget raised nearly $100,000 from friends, family and some random generous donors, to open the home. They collected clothes, furniture, toys, and recruited volunteers and workers in Armenia (not an easy task). Stateside they formed a non-profit to raise money and support the group home in Armenia. They make trips when they can to check up on the project. It's difficult from the States, but an Armenian non-profit is overseeing the group home in-country.
They've made quite a difference. One story: 26-year-old Yulia's parents abandoned her when she was 6 because she has autism. Yulia has since been shifted from orphanage to orphanage and was severely neglected until she was 15. As a result she was profoundly underweight and did not speak for many years. She now speaks and is learning to write! Other group home residents have answered the phone for the first time and have made coffee for the first time.
The project is eventually going to include vocational training for the residents. They will also raise some of their own food, including chicken, fruits and vegetables. Residents will also attend a community day center for individuals with disabilities, providing opportunity for rehabilitation and re-integration into society.
It really is incredible that two women have done all of this from scratch and raised the money in grassroots efforts – and that these eight residents' lives are changed forever because of it. I hope that others will step up, in Romania and elsewhere, and work to better these children and adults' lives. You can check out more on the project at www.helpforarmenia.org/warmhearth.html.
