| Yuri Sergeevich Savenko | |
|---|---|
| Born | Soviet Union |
| Residence | Moscow |
| Citizenship | Russia |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Fields | Psychiatry |
| Institutions | the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia |
| Known for | Human rights activism |
Yuri Sergeevich Savenko (Russian: Ю́рий Серге́евич Саве́нко) is a Russian psychiatrist, the president since 1989 of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia.[1] He is also a member of the Council of Experts under the Ombudsman for Human Rights in the Russian Federation.[2] He holds M.D.[3]:184 and Ph.D. qualifications, and is editor-in-chief of and a regular contributor to the Nezavisimiy Psikhiatricheskiy Zhurnal, which has been published since 1991.[4] He had been working as editorial consultant of the Moskovskiy Psikhoterapevticheskiy Zhurnal (“Moscow Journal for Psychotherapy”) for many years before he left this position in 2008.[5]
Before defending his doctoral thesis, Savenko was expelled from the Institute of Psychiatry in 1974.[6]
His main works concern anxious psychotic syndromes,[7] problems of 'psychotic level', subjects in psychiatry, and the classification of mental disorders.[8]
Yuri Savenko took part in a 'wrongful confinement' lawsuit filed in the European Court of Human Rights in 2003.[9]:294 When writing about this case, Savenko charged the Serbsky Institute with having a "pernicious effect on Russian medicine" and warned that the leadership of the psychiatric community "is now completely under the shadow of the state."[9]:294
On 28 May 2009, Yuri Savenko wrote to the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev an open letter, in which Savenko asked Medvedev to submit to the State Duma a draft law prepared by the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia to address a sharp drop in the level of forensic psychiatric examinations, which Savenko attributed to a lack of competition within the sector and its increasing nationalization.[10]