Interview with Mr. I., 2022-09-19

Mr. I. talks about his early life, family, education, how his dissident views formed and evolved with time. He shares about his repeated contacts with psychiatric system; he also describes his social and political activity and the repercussions he faced as a result. Mr. I. then tells about his criminal case, his forensic psychiatric evaluation, diagnosis, “symptoms”, finding of non-imputability, the legal procedure used to involuntarily commit him to the Dnepropetrovsk special psychiatric hospital, and the inhumane conditions there. Mr. I. then describes his transfer to Nikolayev ordinary psychiatric hospital and release; he talks about his dissident activity that brought him back to the same hospital. He also describes his contacts with Ukrainian dissident movement at the end of 1980s and how he got on the list of people to be assessed by the U.S. team. The details of his participation in 1989 U.S. State Department mission are discussed next. Mr. I. then shares about the long-term impact this mission made on his life, his subsequent legal rehabilitation, being taken off the psychiatric register, the removal of his psychiatric diagnosis, his life and activism after 1989. Mr. I. describes some of his most interesting campaigns. The interview ends with a brief discussion of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and how it affected Mr. I.'s life.

Olena Protsenko, a Post-doctoral Research Associate in Psychiatry and Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, conducted this interview remotely over the Zoom application.