---
title: "Sluggish schizophrenia"
chunk: 4/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sluggish_schizophrenia"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:09:39.646559+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Recurrence in post-Soviet countries ==
In 2010, Yuri Savenko, the president of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia, warned that Professor Anatoly Smulevich, author of the monographs Problema Paranoyi (The Problem of Paranoia) (1972) and Maloprogredientnaya Shizofreniya (Continuous Sluggish Schizophrenia) (1987), which had contributed to the hyperdiagnosis of sluggish schizophrenia, had again begun to play the same role. Under his influence, therapists have begun to widely use antidepressants and antipsychotics but often in inadequate cases and in inappropriate doses, without consulting psychiatrists. This situation has opened up a huge new market for pharmaceutical firms, and the flow of the mentally ill to internists.
In their joint book Sociodinamicheskaya Psikhiatriya (Sociodynamic Psychiatry), Doctor of Medical Sciences professor of psychiatry Caesar Korolenko and Doctor of Psychological Sciences Nina Dmitrieva note that Smulevich's clinical description of sluggish schizophrenia is extremely elusive and includes almost all possible changes in mental status and conditions that occur in a person without psychopathology: euphoria, hyperactivity, unfounded optimism, irritability, explosiveness, sensitivity, inadequacy and emotional deficit, hysterical reactions with conversive and dissociative symptoms, infantilism, obsessive-phobic states and stubbornness. At present, the hyperdiagnosis of schizophrenia becomes especially negative due to a large number of schizophreniform psychoses caused by the increasing popularity of various esoteric sects. They practice meditation, sensory deprivation, special exercises with rhythmic movements which directly stimulate the deep subconscious and, by doing so, lead to the development of psychoses with mainly reversible course. Smulevich bases the diagnosis of continuous sluggish schizophrenia, in particular, on appearance and lifestyle and stresses that the forefront in the picture of negative changes is given to the contrast between retaining mental activity (and sometimes quite high capacity for work) and mannerism, unusualness of one's appearance and entire lifestyle. In his 2014 interview, Anatoly Smulevich says, "Now everything has slightly turned in a different way, sluggish schizophrenia has been transformed into schizotypal disorder, etc. I think it is not the end of his [Snezhnevsky's] teaching, because after a while, everything will get back into a rut, but it will not be a simple repetition but will get some new direction."
In 2009, Tatyana Dmitrieva, the then director of the Serbsky Center, said to the BBC Russian Service, "A diagnosis is now made only according to the international classification, so called ICD-10. In this classification, there is no sluggish schizophrenia, and therefore, even this diagnosis has not just been made for a long time." However, according to the 2012 interview by the president of the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association Semyon Gluzman to Radio Liberty, though the diagnosis of sluggish schizophrenia no longer exists in Ukraine, in Russia, as far as he knows, this diagnosis still exists, and was given to Mikhail Kosenko, one of the accused in the Bolotnaya Square case. The prosecution's case for his forced hospitalization rested on confirmation of the diagnosis of sluggish schizophrenia that he has been treated for over the last 12 years, until 2013 when the diagnosis was changed to that of paranoid schizophrenia by the Serbsky Center experts who examined Kosenko and convinced the court to send him for compulsory treatment to a psychiatric hospital. Zurab Kekelidze (ru), who heads the Serbsky Center and is the chief psychiatrist of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation, confirmed that Kosenko was diagnosed with sluggish schizophrenia.
According to the commentary by the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia on the 2007 text by Vladimir Rotstein, a doctrinist of Snezhnevsky's school, there are sufficient patients with delusion of reformism in psychiatric inpatient facilities for involuntary treatment. In 2012, delusion of reformism was mentioned as a symptom of mental disorder in Psychiatry: National Manual. In the same year, Vladimir Pashkovsky in his paper reported that he diagnosed 4.7 percent of 300 patients with delusion of reform. As Russian sociologist Alexander Tarasov wrote, "you will be treated in a hospital so that you and all your acquaintances get to learn forever that only such people as Anatoly Chubais or German Gref can be occupied with reforming in our country." According to Raimonds Krumgolds, a former member of the political party The Other Russia, he was examined because of his "delusion of reformism", which gave rise to an assumption of slow progressive schizophrenia. In 2012, Tyuvina and Balabanova in their joint paper reported that they used sulpiride to treat slow progressive schizophrenia.

== See also ==
Drapetomania
Excited delirium
Female hysteria
Gaslighting
The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease
Oppositional defiant disorder
Sluggish cognitive tempo
Trump derangement syndrome

== References ==

== Sources ==

== Further reading ==
citeBukovsky, Vladimir (1978b). To build a castle: my life as a dissenter (PDF). Deutsch. pp. 194–223, 259–272, 355–391. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-01. Retrieved 2014-05-29. Russian text: citeBukovsky, Vladimir [Владимир Буковский] (1978a). И возвращается ветер… [And the wind returns…] (PDF) (in Russian). New York: Хроника [Khronika]. pp. 172–198, 233–244, 314–343. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-02-03. Retrieved 2014-06-11.
citeTernovsky, Leonard [Леонард Терновский] (1999). "Тайна ИГ" [The secret of the IG]. Карта: Российский независимый исторический и правозащитный журнал [Karta: Russian Independent Historical and Human Rights Defending Journal] (in Russian) (22–23): 68–96. Retrieved 4 February 2014.
citeLavretsky, Helen (1998). "The Russian Concept of Schizophrenia: A Review of the Literature". Schizophrenia Bulletin. 24 (4): 537–557. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.schbul.a033348. PMID 9853788.
citeVoren, Robert van (2009). On Dissidents and Madness: From the Soviet Union of Leonid Brezhnev to the "Soviet Union" of Vladimir Putin. Amsterdam—New York: Rodopi. ISBN 978-90-420-2585-1.