What the inspectors recorded at Leros

825 patients, eight psychiatrists, one shower per 36 people

On its first periodic visit to Greece, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture visited the Lepida and Lakki establishments and the hospital for children with special needs. The report was published at the request of the Greek authorities themselves.

At the visit there were 825 patients — 240 women, 585 men — against a nominal capacity of about 900. Many had lived there twenty to thirty years or more. The staff numbered 39 doctors of whom only 8 were psychiatrists, one psychologist, one physiotherapist and 155 nurses, of whom only about seven had three years' training.

The pavilions, the Committee wrote, "can fairly be described as miserable" and "may be likened to large sheds for human beings". Lepida XI held 200 people in four sections of 50, permanently confined to their beds in rooms with no heating whatsoever. One shower served 36 patients in Lepida VIII, 44 in Lakki IV.

What the Committee found — and what it did not. The wording is that it found conditions "akin to inhuman and degrading treatment". That is not a finding of inhuman and degrading treatment, and we do not upgrade it. Explicitly: "The delegation heard no allegations, and gathered no other evidence, of torture relating to the psychiatric institutions visited. Nor did it receive any allegations or other direct evidence of deliberate ill-treatment of other kinds." The Committee attributes the cause to a severe shortage of resources, not to intent. At Leros it observed no physical restraint of patients, although it did see leather straps for that purpose.

And a correction for anyone who has seen the material in circulation: the worst individual scenes in the report — the girl who had lived naked in a dark room for years — are not from Leros. They are from the Attica State Mental Hospital for children at Rafina. The two are widely confused.

[1] CPT, "Report to the Government of Greece on the visit carried out from 14 to 26 March 1993", CPT/Inf (94) 20, §§195–196, 202, 207, 226–233, 254, 278

Who went in, and what obstruction they met

The delegation included psychiatrists and clinicians of international standing. They were not journalists or campaigners: they were specialists whose own expertise qualified them to judge what they saw.

The report also records an obstruction: "the delegation gained the distinct impression that some of the persons working at the Leros psychiatric establishments had been discouraged by the authorities in charge from having any contact with the delegation" — which would breach Article 3 of the Convention.

At the same time the Committee notes "the good intentions and genuine efforts of the staff", and that the nursing staff of Lepida XI had carried out renovation and decoration work on their own initiative.

We declare the conflict of interest of a source that suits us: the CPT is not an adversarial inspectorate. It operates on a treaty principle of co-operation and states itself that "the CPT's task is not to publicly criticise States". Its reports are confidential and are published only with the state's consent.

[1] CPT/Inf (94) 20, §§2, 8, 227, 279

The target was to close Leros by 2015. It did not close.

Psychargos B set out expressly to abolish the psychiatric hospitals of Athens, Thessaloniki and Leros by 2015. By the Ministry of Health's own account, six of the nine public psychiatric hospitals were abolished and roughly 4,000 psychosocial rehabilitation places created. But Athens still has two hospitals, Thessaloniki remains, and Leros continues in a different legal form. The 2015 target was not met.

Two things are said alongside that. First, the target ran head-on into the sovereign-debt crisis: the bailout capped public health spending at 6% of GDP and the public hospital budget was cut by more than a quarter between 2009 and 2011. Second, every figure here is self-reported: both documents are the Ministry of Health assessing a programme the Ministry designed and ran.

[4] Greek Ministry of Health, "PSYCHARGOS C (2011–2020) — Revision plan", November 2011, sections A.1, A.3, A.5

What is on Leros today

The institution did not close. It operates as the State Therapeutic Hospital – General Hospital – Health Centre of Leros under the 2nd Health Region, and the Ministry of Health does not count it among the country's three remaining psychiatric hospitals — although its own clinicians still publish under the name "Psychiatric Hospital of Leros". The legal designation and the working name diverge.

A 2024 census in the journal Psychiatriki, by six authors of whom four are connected to the institution, reports 212 inpatients with a mean age of 62.4 years, 87 new admissions in the 35 years since the reform began, intellectual disability and psychotic-spectrum disorders at 40% each, and one person hospitalised continuously for 62 years.

There are also 11 supported-living apartments in settlements around the island, housing 46 residents, four to six per apartment. That is the reform that did happen — partly.

[5] State Therapeutic Hospital – General Hospital – Health Centre of Leros, official site · 2nd Health Region of Piraeus and the Aegean · [6] 2024 census, Psychiatriki