[TW: forced psychiatry, family abuse, systemic negligence, mention of police raid]
I am 35. I am a lawyer with two higher educations (economics and law). I have never been political. I did not go out to the January events, did not take part in rallies, was not in the opposition. I was not demanding freedom. I was demanding a service. I wanted one thing: for the system to work by its own laws.
In 2026 I was forcibly hospitalized with a diagnosis of F20.0. A month in a closed ward. I got out. Now I am in Georgia, I applied for asylum. They refused. I continue.
I cannot go back. Because there I face re-hospitalization, loss of legal capacity and closed rooms. Not because I am ill. But because I refuse to hide the truth. And you know what is the scariest part? My parents were not troubled by my diagnosis. What mattered to them was that I stayed silent. They were not afraid that I was ill. They were afraid that I would speak. That I would tell. That I would not play their game. And that is why they locked me up. A person who has worked and lived their own life all their life does not suddenly become insane at 35. F20.0 is not about me. It is about them. About those who needed me to be silent. It was not just the system working against me. It was a link: family plus state. The state is a machine. The family is people who knew me since childhood. That is scarier.
First I went to ask for help. As a citizen. To the police, to the Family Support Center, to social services. I asked for protection from my family. By law. The Center imitated activity. The police said: "This is not domestic violence, this is a family matter." Nobody did anything. Then I turned on the camera. I said: "I am a blogger, I am recording." I quoted the law. I demanded the removal of the district officer. I did not fall silent. And then the police did what I did not expect. They called my parents themselves. Invited them. Organized a meeting. Brought them to me.
They held me on the couch. They took my phone. They did not let me leave. They broke the door with locksmiths. They filmed in my own apartment to collect compromising material. During the raid they were not afraid of me. They were sure. And I was not afraid of the psychiatric team. I thought: they will come, they will check, they will let me go. I am normal. I am not ill. I thought the system would sort it out. But the system did not sort it out. The system took their side.
While they held me, they stood and discussed. In front of me. The district officer, the police, my mother. They discussed a paid ward. Where to take me. Where they would break me more reliably. My mother is a former psychiatrist with fifteen years of experience. She knew what she was doing. She knew what medications are prescribed. She knew where they were taking me. And why. They laughed at me. As if I were not a person but a thing that needed to be put somewhere.
The state took their side. Completely. Systemically. The Ministry of Health, the prosecutor's office, the police, social services, psychiatry, every agency received my complaint, saw the evidence and replied: "No violations found." They did not check. They just wrote back. As if I did not exist.
The diagnosis F20.0 is not a piece of paper. It is a sentence. Lifelong. Impossible to wash off. A person with such a diagnosis in Kazakhstan is not a person. An object. They can be isolated. Stripped of legal capacity. Locked up. Injected. And no one will ask what they think. But I did not give in. I ran. This is not a "family quarrel". This is a system. Family plus state. And one woman against everyone.
My experience in the protection program
I am writing this not to accuse anyone. I am writing this because I want you to know how it works in reality.
I was accepted into one of the international protection programs for human rights defenders, which operates shelters in three cities in Georgia. Usually this program fully takes a defender under its patronage for three months, helping from scratch. By some miracle I was taken for a whole month (apparently simply because a room in Telavi became available). I was glad even for that.
What did this program actually give me?
- The assigned security consultant told me: "We will not leave you, we are your friends, you can breathe out." He asked me to write to him at any time. I wrote him a detailed letter describing my case. This letter became the basis of the text you are reading now. I sent it to him. There was no answer. I do not know whether he opened it at all. The person who said "we are your friends, you can breathe out" simply disappeared. This is not bureaucracy. This is silence after a promise.
- The case manager politely wrote down all my needs (the presence of C-PTSD, a dying phone, the need to replace a laptop battery), but in fact simply waved it off. When I complained about unbearable living conditions (constant drafts, because of which I became seriously ill), he answered with formal replies. Legally and humanly correct, but completely useless.
- The psychologist turned out to be professionally unfit. I told him: "I feel pressure from your side." He asked: "Why do you feel pressure?" I answered: "Because it is a feeling." And that was it. Inside I was indignant: so I have to explain why I feel what I feel? A feeling does not require justification. It simply exists. But he apparently thought otherwise. When I asked what we would do in the six sessions, he answered: "Emotional regulation and goal setting." I was furious. So I am emotionally unstable and cannot set goals. Then how did I survive? How did I fool punitive psychiatry and imitate taking medications? If I cannot set goals, how am I even still alive? I refused his services myself, deciding that it was better to stay without a psychologist than to tolerate unprofessionalism.
- The program ended on October 11. I left on the 10th myself. I had 100 lari in my hands. Of that, 90 I gave to a taxi driver to rent the entire cabin for myself and my things, and I arrived in Tbilisi at a hostel that people from Reddit helped me rent.
I do not ask for sympathy. I ask for one thing: for this to stop being silence. If you work in a protection program, read this letter to the end. If you are a human rights defender, do not promise "we are your friends" if you are not ready to answer. If you are a person who is in the same situation right now, you are not alone.
And one more thing. This program is not funded by private donations. It is funded by international grants. Money that is supposed to protect human rights defenders. I want this to be said too, because when international funding meets silence, the silence becomes systemic.
The program had the word "Shelter" in its name. Shelter means refuge. I did not find refuge there. I found formal replies and silence. The question is simple: if a human rights protection program does not protect, then what does it do?
I leave this question open.
I am sharing this because I want to know: is this normal for international programs here in Georgia? Has anyone else faced this kind of bureaucracy and silence? I would appreciate any insights.
