EU candidate Bulgaria 'beats, chains and cages mentally ill'

Mental hospitals in Bulgaria are worse than prisons, human rights campaigners said in a report released two days after the country became an EU candidate member.

Psychiatric patients were beaten, chained and kept in cruel and degrading conditions, the report by Amnesty International and the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee said. One woman had been chained to a wall for a year. Severely mentally disabled children, surrounded by a swarm of flies, were kept in bed with only plastic sheeting and no toys.

Patients were found dying of neglect due to malnutrition, freezing temperatures and lack of medical care. Invalids were beaten with sticks, caged in tiny cells for months on end, and lived in faeces-smeared units, the report said. A resident of one social care home said: "This is not a place for human beings. People die here."

Dr Mary Meyers, a psychiatrist who visited several social care homes, said the cases reported were part of the culture of appalling care. "It is one of simply controlling and warehousing people."

The European Commission said in its enlargement report on Wednesday that it approved of the political and economic reforms the former communist country had made, and planned to add Bulgaria to the EU in 2007.

The Bulgarian government has said it wants to reform the healthcare system. Last year it laid out plans to close many psychiatric wards, increase funding and modernise the system. The deputy minister of labour and social policy, Christina Christova, said the government had the "firm political will to deal with the serious situation in the social care homes". Critics said reforms were happening too slowly.