 At the turn of the century, the psychiatric reform that had been implemented by Franco Basaglia in Italy became known and was publicly declared to be implemented in Russia, with the view of retrenchment of expenditures. But when it became clear that even more money was needed for the reform, it got bogged down in the same way the reform of the army and many other undertakings did. 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, Gushansky says, is aware of the need for mental health reform, we will live in the atmosphere of animosity, mistrust and violence. Many experts believe that problems spread beyond psychiatry to society as a whole. As Robert van Voren 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. 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 the Soviet Union, there had been an increase of the bed numbers because psychiatric services had been used to treat dissidents.
