The Kashchenko Psychoneurological Hospital complex is an architectural ensemble and a functioning medical institution in the Historic Center of Nizhny Novgorod, located at Ulyanova Street, 41. The complex was built in 1886–1888 to a design by the St. Petersburg architect I. V. Shtrom under the supervision of the engineer-architect Byshevsky, and has been recognized as a monument of urban planning and architecture.[2] The modern legal successor of the historic hospital, the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Clinical Mental Health Center named after P. P. Kashchenko (NOKTsPZ), a state-funded healthcare institution of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, is the region's leading specialized psychiatric institution.[1]
History of construction and founding
The hospital's predecessor was a 30-bed psychiatric ward at the Martynovskaya Hospital, opened in 1837. By the end of the 1870s it was catastrophically unable to cope with the load: in 1878 D. A. Vensky, the hospital's chief physician, reported to the zemstvo assembly on the unacceptable conditions in which patients were kept. Following the report, the zemstvo allocated 60,000 rubles for the construction of a new hospital, and in 1884 added another 101,000 rubles. Construction began in 1886 on a site that already held six small wooden buildings of the Martynovskaya Hospital's women's ward. Two of them have survived to the present day in rebuilt form, housing a club, a kitchen, and the office of the labor inspector.[2]
In 1886–1888 two main buildings were erected, one for men and one for women: one wooden, the other of stone with wooden wings. The buildings were equipped with running water and sewerage, stove heating with forced-air ventilation and exhaust vents, and electric lighting, a very high standard of amenities for the time.[2]
Kashchenko's work and medical reforms
In 1888 P. P. Kashchenko, who had previously worked at the Burashevo Psychiatric Colony in Tver Governorate, was invited to the hospital; in 1889 he took up the post of head physician. The hospital's name is traditionally associated with him, although the complex itself was built before he arrived.[2]
Kashchenko consistently introduced humane methods of treatment: he abandoned the use of restraints on patients, set up workshops in the former main building of the women's hospital (now the club), including sewing, carpentry, basket-weaving, and straw workshops, and laid out a garden and a vegetable plot. Work therapy and cultural therapy became the basis of the treatment process. The hospital became one of the first Russian institutions to apply such methods systematically.[2] After the creation of a colony for the mentally ill near the selo (large village) of Lyakhovo and a family-care colony in the selo of Kubintsevo near Balakhna, the Kashchenko hospital became the admissions and triage unit of a three-tier system for treating the mentally ill that was unique in Russia.[2]
Besides Kashchenko, the psychiatrists S. I. Mitskevich, A. I. Pisnyachevsky, Ya. G. Ilon, and N. V. Ivanov worked at the hospital in various years.[2]
Current state
The architectural complex has survived in practically unchanged form and continues to be used for its original purpose.[2] As a result of the reorganization of the psychiatric service of Nizhny Novgorod Region, the NOKTsPZ merged several institutions: Clinical Psychiatric Hospital No. 1 of the city of Nizhny Novgorod, Psychiatric Hospital No. 2, Nizhny Novgorod Regional Psychoneurological Hospital No. 3, and the Dzerzhinsk Psychoneurological Dispensary.[1]
At the time the information was published, the center had 750 beds, 11 inpatient departments, an outpatient department, and treatment and diagnostic services. The institution's structure includes the only children's psychiatric department in the Region, with 60 beds. The center serves as an organizational and methodological center coordinating the activities of all psychiatric institutions in the region. Since 1993, it has regularly hosted advanced-training courses for mid-level medical staff of psychiatric institutions in the health care and social protection systems.[1]
Funding was provided by the Nizhny Novgorod industrialists Ivan, Nikolay, and Mitrofan Rukavishnikov, Nikolay Aleksandrovich Bugrov, as well as by donations from city residents.[3]
Sources
- autotravel-nn.ru — The colony for the mentally ill near the selo (a larger village) of Lyakhovo, which became one of the links in a three-tier treatment system, was built in 1899–1908 to a design by the architect P. P. (archive)
- nokcpz.mznn.ru — State Budgetary Healthcare Institution of Nizhny Novgorod Region "P. P. Kashchenko Nizhny Novgorod Regional Clinical Mental Health Center" (archive)
- autotravel-nn.ru — The Kashchenko P. P. psychoneurological hospital complex — a monument of urban planning and architecture in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)