the prejudice that the mentally ill allegedly pose a danger to society, though it is not so: the percentage of criminals among the mentally ill is less than that among the so-called "healthy" population. statistics show those who are ill with schizophrenia commit fewer illegal acts (less than 1%) than those considered mentally healthy. involuntary hospitalization in a psychiatric hospital under article 29 of the law is to meet the following three grounds: a mentally disturbed individual may be hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital against his will or the will of his legal representative and without a court decision having been taken, if the individual's examination or treatment can only be carried out by in-patient care, and the mental disorder is severe enough to give rise to: a) a direct danger to the person or to others, or b) the individual's helplessness, i.e. an inability to take care of himself, or c) a significant impairment in health as a result of a deteriorating mental condition, if the affected person were to be left without psychiatric care. neither direct danger nor severe mental disorder is defined in the law. according to the ipa president yuri savenko, loud claims, importunate molestations, shocking texts in a personal computer, participation in protests, hunger strikes, protest reaction against sudden and rude involuntary measures started to be called a direct danger. according to american psychiatrist thomas szasz, the psychiatric formula of "dangerousness to self and others" is very susceptible to changes of medical, political and social fashion. prior to 1973, homosexuality was such a dangerousness, and since then has no longer been. psychologist-criminalist nataliya varskaya says that neuroleptics that are applied to serious patients make them "vegetables", but the ill stop posing a danger to citizens; alas, but there are no other ways to secure surrounding people against them. she adds, dangerous patients are not cured even in psychiatric hospitals, they were previously kept in the wards for life, doctors examined them every six months and prolonged, prolonged, prolonged their custody; the doctors were aware that these patients are very dangerous, it is inadmissible to let them go to the streets. the citizen may voluntarily come to a psychiatrist who would find a severe mental disorder that requires the mandatory admission to a psychiatric inpatient unit. if the patient refuses the hospitalization offered to him, the doctor gets the right to start the procedure of involuntary hospitalization. as a psychiatrist says, it is only a psychiatrist who is able to inquire into a patient's condition and to decide whether his refusal to be treated is a free man's conscious choice or a symptom of a mental disorder. in psychiatrist's opinion, the mentally ill often do not feel and do not deem they are ill. they actively avoid therapy and resist all efforts to subject them to it. the more the person resists the inpatient psychiatric ward's demands for his hospitalization, the greater are his chances to find himself indoors or, more precisely, to be left there, because his resistance can be presented by the ward representatives as the lack of his due insight into mental status, as an indication of the severity of his disease. in the same vein, the practice was justified by american psychiatrist benjamin rush as early as the eighteenth century: "the more they resist our efforts to serve them, the more they have need of our services." the reluctance of patients to undergo neuroleptic treatment, their "spontaneous irritation", protests, etc. are considered as either unremoved symptoms of mental illness (such as depressive neurosis) or, along with tremor, anxiety, dysphoric mood disorder, as "transitory complications". it is profitable for doctors to hospitalize the person in any cases, then bedspace fills up. remuneration of the labour of physicians in psychiatric hospitals and funding of the entire industry in russia are carried out on the basis of the number of beds run by the doctor. russian human rights activist valery abramkin says it should be clear for a russian patient that each medic legally and illegally snatches his large sum from each bed. however, psychiatrists in their usual way counter the remarks that their funding depends on the number of psychiatric beds by ascribing them to antipsychiatrists and stating that the main motto of antipsychiatrists is the idea that psychiatrists are villains who dream of placing as many people as possible to madhouses. data obtained as results of analysing the work of the psychiatric inpatient facilities show that two thirds of patients placed in a hospital without their consent actively refuse hospitalization. in the rest of cases, they are unable to express their attitude to the events because of their mental condition. duration and rate of hospitalization despite the 1992 russian mental health law, coercive psychiatry in russia remains generally unregulated and fashioned by the same trends toward hyperdiagnosis and overreliance on institutional care characteristic of the soviet period. in russia, mental health care is meant to be provided by inpatient psychiatric facilities rather than by outpatient services. in the soviet union, there had been an increase of the bed numbers because psychiatric services had been used to treat dissidents. in 2005, the russian federation had one of the highest levels of psychiatric beds per capita in europe at 113.2 per 100,000 population, or more than 161,000 beds. in 2014, russia has 104.8 beds per 100,000 population and no actions have been taken to arrange new facilities for outpatient services. the number of outpatient clinics designed for the primary care of the mentally disordered stopped increasing in 2005 and was reduced to 277 in 2012 as against 318 in 2005. an average patient's stay in a day-and-night inpatient psychiatric facility is extremely long, 75.5 days. nevertheless, the average rehospitalization rate in the russian federation amounts to 21.5%, and the portion of people kept in inpatient facilities longer than one year was 21.7% in 2012 and 22.2% in 2013. psychiatrist sofia dorinskaya says she saw former convicts who have been living in a russian mental hospital for ten years and will have been staying there until their dying day because of having no home. the total number of the mentally ill registered disabled has increased by 20% over a few years, from 826,036 in 1999 to 1,020,002 in 2008 for the population of 141.9 million in the country (2010 figure). persons who do not respond well to treatment at dispensaries can be sent to long-term social care institutions (internats) wherein they remain indefinitely. the internats are managed by oblast social protection ministries. russia had 442 psychoneurologic internats by 1999, and their number amounted to 505 by 2013. the internats provided places for approximately 125,000 people in 2007. in 2013, russian psychoneurologic internats accommodated 146,000 people, according to the consolidated data of the department of social protection of moscow and the ministry of labour and social protection of the russian federation. it is supposed that the number of beds in internats is increasing at the same rate with which the number of beds is decreasing in psychiatric hospitals. lyubov vinogradova of the independent psychiatric association of russia provides the different figure of 122,091 or 85.5 places in psychoneurologic institutions of social protection (internats) per 100,000 population in 2013 and says that russia is high on europe's list of the number of places in the institutions. vinogradova states that many regions have the catastrophic shortage of places in psychoneurological internats, her words point out to the need to increase the number of places there and to the fact that the independent psychiatric association of russia is forcing transinstitutionalization—relocating the mentally ill from their homes and psychiatric hospitals to psychoneurological internats. as robert van voren, the chief executive of the federation global initiative on psychiatry, supposes, the russians want to have their compatriots with mental disorders locked up outside the city and do not want to have them in community. persons in internats are brought to sleepy condition by psychotropic drugs and have to pass through the very long and complex procedure to be discharged from an internat, as shown in the film see me, hear me produced by russia today in 2014. however, according to law, the staff does not have the right to treat inmates in psychoneurologic internats. russia is decades behind the countries of the european union in mental health reform, which has already been implemented or is being implemented in them. until russian society, russian psychiatrist emmanuil gushansky says, is aware of the need for mental health reform, we will live in the atmosphere of animosity, mistrust and violence. involvement of law enforcement according to yuri savenko, the ipa president, law enforcement practice is very far from the letter of the law. forensic psychiatric expert examination has deteriorated because of the lack of competition, and courts implicitly fulfill wishes of the hierarchy of executive authority affected by corruption. discrediting the citizens by instituting farfetched proceedings to obtain a ground for examination is a favorite tactic of officials whose interests are hurt by the active members of public. the police deliver "the ill" to a psychiatric facility, and the doctor can be sure that his facility will not be reduced, and, in general, the more "patients", the more funding. even if the criminal case is closed due to its complete failure, it does not regard the dispensary, the person is all the same "ill". there is nowhere to refute one's misdiagnosis in russia. according to yuliya argunova, the ipa lawyer, police officers are obliged under part 3 of article 30 of the law to assist medical workers in implementing involuntary hospitalization and to ensure safe conditions for the access to the hospitalized person and for his examination. while assisting hospital attendants to enter into the homes of citizens whose names are written by psychoneurological dispensaries on their referrals to hospitalization, police officers have little care about the absence of a court order (which can't even be issued at such a stage), the security of the hospitalized persons, the protection of their personality and preservation of their property. according to psychiatrist sofia dorinskaya, the situation always develops in the same way: either in the evening or at night, or in the early morning, when a person sleeps, the police break the door down in his apartment or room, handcuff and escort them directly or through a police office to a mental hospital, where the door is closed behind the person. the suspected person sits face to face with a psychiatrist, then everything written by the psychiatrist will be a proof of the person's mental illness for the judge in court. however, there is no system that verifies the psychiatrist's statements, so the activities of the accused are often falsified, even when the patient says or performs nothing abnormal. one case, described by lawyers yuri ershov and nataliya kozlova, depicts an ambulance arriving with a rescue service brigade, in order for the person's front door to be broken down after the person refused to open the door. the doctor involved considered that the indignant reaction of the person to such situation was abnormal and sufficient to justify his hospitalization. in her book the psychiatrist's notes, dorinskaya depicts how a person well oriented in place and time was hospitalized because of a 'fit of schizophrenia', as described in the referral to his hospitalization. in addition, the referral reported that "he beat his wife and used bad language". dorinskaya writes how she and her colleagues forged many signatures of their patients on the forms of consent to hospitalization in medical histories before a prosecutor's investigation. she cites the dialog: "and what if a signature does not match?"—"and who will investigate?" although ershov and kozlova describe that it is easy for the lawyer to come to places of confinement and meet with his client and the administration of the penal colony after going through the formalities stipulated in law, the lawyers have to litigate for the right to get into a psychiatric hospital. as st. petersburg lawyer fanis khalikov notes, the information about the time and place of the court session may simply be hidden from the hospitalized person and his representative. the hospitalized person may learn that he is in court at the time when the court session is underway or ready to start presently, when nothing can