A radio show broadcast live from a Moscow psychiatric hospital every Saturday kicks off with a jokey jingle — ‘Radio Through the Looking Glass, it’s nuts!’
This is a station with a difference: Russia’s first to transmit from a psychiatric institution whose presenters are all being treated for mental illness, mostly schizophrenia.
And it’s not just any psychiatric facility — this is Moscow’s red-brick Alexeyev hospital, infamous in Soviet times for confining dissidents diagnosed with “mental problems” under the regime’s bid to silence opponents.
It is still better known by its Soviet-era name, Kashchenko, which has entered everyday lingo as the term for “loony bin” — pejorative, maybe, but this hasn’t stopped the presenters from using it.
“Hi everyone,” quips Daniil, opening the hour-long show in a Homer Simpson T-shirt. “This is Radio Through the Looking Glass with you, as usual. And as usual, we're broadcasting on Saturday direct from the Kashchenko.”
Named after Lewis Carroll’s fantasy tale about Alice, the station started in 2014, broadcasts online and has caught attention in a country where there is still a massive stigma around mental illness.
The presenters are outpatients, living at home, with two saying they travel 90 minutes to take part in the novel broadcast. They range in age from the 20s to the late 40s. When the broadcast goes live, the presenters take turns to discuss the show’s theme: the limits of sympathy and compassion.
“I don’t tell my tragic tale to all and sundry... but none of my friends whom I told about my mental condition have rejected me at all,” said presenter Mikhail Larsov.
Many prefer not to use their real names but speak articulately about their situation — with no supervision from medics.
The idea came from a radio station in Spain, says psychiatrist Arkady Shmilovich, who heads the hospital’s rehabilitation department and the radio project. —AFP
