Hospital Visit Summaries, 1989

Correspondence, reports, drafts, psychological testing instruments, subject files, and audio and video recordings which document a 1989 joint NIMH/U.S. State Department delegation visit to the Soviet Union to assess the state of Soviet psychiatry. The delegation focused on the diagnosis status, treatment, and human rights protections given to political and religious dissidents who had been involuntarily committed to psychiatric hospitals.

Series 1: Correspondence contains letters to and from members of the delegation and largely consists of topics such as trip planning, training, coordination with Soviet contacts and the U.S. State Department, policy discussions, and responses to the visit. Correspondence relating to the final report and the Soviets' return visit is found in Series 2 (Final Reports) and Series 7 (Soviet Return Visit) respectively.

Various iterations of the delegation's final report are found in Series 2. In addition to the published version of the report that appeared in Schizophrenia Bulletin, the series contains numerous drafts of different sections of the report. Notably, Series 2 contains the published Soviet response to the U.S. delegation's final report.

Accounts by individual members of the delegation visit are found in Series 3. This series also contains written accounts, summaries, and video and audio recordings of the delegation's overall visit as well as their visits to ordinary psychiatric and special psychiatric hospitals. Many of the records in Series 3 contain patient health information and the series is restricted according to the History of Medicine Division's Access to Personally Identifiable Health Information policy.

Records pertaining to the return visit by Soviet psychiatrists to the United States comprises Series 7. This series notably contains correspondence and policy decisions related to the deferment of the return visit due to controversy over human rights abuse allegations lodged against one member of the Soviet delegation (see visit deferment).

Video recordings of a 2005 retrospective symposium about the U.S. delegation's visit, held in memory of delegation member Dr. David Lozovsky, can be found in Series 8.