Health and Defense ministries to develop discharge mechanism for troops with severe mental disorders
The Ministry of Health, together with the Ministry of Defense, will develop a mechanism for dismissing servicemen from the Armed Forces of Ukraine with acute mental and behavioral disorders acquired during service, as well as other mental illnesses.
The parliamentary committee on national health, medical care and medical insurance made the corresponding decision during its meeting last week, considering the relevant issue at the initiative of committee member Yana Zinkevich.
During the consideration of the issue, she noted that she receives appeals from citizens regarding cases when servicemen with acquired mental illnesses, in particular schizophrenia, voluntarily leave the military unit during manic episodes or exacerbations.
"Very often, patients who have a period of mania or hallucinations leave the unit (SZCH), then the State Bureau of Internal Affairs opens a case against such a person. Usually this person is found in some medical institution, because very often their condition requires hospitalization. So a person AWOL cannot return to his brigade, because he is not allowed to contact weapons. We need to think of some effective mechanism that will allow people with severe mental pathologies to be discharged quickly and be released from further service," she said.
Director of the Department of Health of the Ministry of Defense Dmytro Samofalov noted that "the problem really exists, because currently the same conditions apply for mental illnesses, as for wounds, traumas and mutilations."
"When a serviceman is undergoing treatment, he is not removed from the lists of personnel of the military unit and his contract is not terminated. This is stipulated in the law as a safeguard so that they are not dismissed or transferred," he said.
For his part, the commander of the Medical Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Anatoly Kazmyrchuk, noted that "in less than four years (of the war - IF-U), about 10% of those discharged from the Armed Forces of Ukraine are precisely those servicemen who have psychiatric articles."
"We understand perfectly well that if we are talking about an acute case of the disease, then the patient needs certain treatment, that is, we cannot suspect the patient. But if we take away his weapon and let him go home, then he will pick up something else there. Therefore, in any case, after the treatment is completed, we make a decision about his unsuitability. Today, we are quite actively implementing a medical information system, which also focuses on military units, I think that there is a need to refine this element," he said. Kazmyrchuk noted that in connection with the implementation of the medical information system in the Ministry of Defense system, "a serviceman who has a mental disorder does not need to go to a military unit and take his documents, he can go home immediately from the medical institution, having received recommendations, and the territorial medical commission and social support centers receive relevant notifications.