Baku experienced a suicide-attempt drama yesterday in a downtown seaside park that highlighted an unusual approach to mental health issues.
Twenty-eight-year-old Parviz Mikailov had climbed a parachute tower and informed onlookers of his intention to jump to his death. Soon enough, the police, an emergency medical team, a psychiatrist and Mikailov's relatives arrived on the scene. Some young people posted a “Love Life!” poster in the window of a nearby building.
Eventually (after Mikailov had slit his wrists), the psychiatrist talked the young man out of jumping and convinced him to come down.
It would have been a typical suicide-attempt situation, if not for the court verdict that followed. Mikailov was not committed to a hospital; rather, he was charged with hooliganism and sent to prison for two months.
Apparently, it did not cross the Baku judge’s mind that a man who first tried to skydive to his death and then cut his wrists might need psychiatric counseling. Instead, the court focused on the breach of public peace.
The World Health Organization has reported that Azerbaijan has neither a state policy for mental health, nor a body to execute it. But the country does have strict rules against disturbing public order.
Perhaps the court decided that two months in an Azerbaijan prison is sufficient therapy? And we are talking about prisons where conditions tend to be harsh and sometimes life-threatening, according to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor of the US State Department.
Arguably, if Mikailov spends his sentence in one of those prisons notorious for overcrowding, inadequate nutrition, lack of heating and ventilation, Baku residents should not be surprised to find him back up that tower.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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