Pictures of people suffering from mental illness. Insane art

There are amazing drawings, maybe these people are still unrecognized geniuses?

M.N., 36 years old, paranoid form of schizophrenia. Education - three classes. Despite the initially low intellectual level, the patient developed a complex delusional concept. The content of the delirium was very peculiar: the patient believed that a laboratory called the "Pluto system" was brought to Earth from some planet. This laboratory is located on an alien ship, and its purpose is to study and enslave earthlings. She drew in the “automatic writing” mode: she put a dot on the sheet and then “the hand itself drove along the paper”. At the same time, she often could not explain the meaning of what was drawn, she said that the content of the drawing was not hers, that “the one who moves his hand knows the meaning.”

MN, paranoid schizophrenia - "Electronic Smoking Man".

MN, paranoid schizophrenia - “Eater. I’m not laughing, but I’m doing my job?! + ”.

MN, paranoid schizophrenia - “Who am I now? Freak: either a pig or a man. I need privacy from the whole World. ”

MN, paranoid schizophrenia - “To control a person, his thoughts are put on an invisible spacesuit connected to the apparatus for constructing thoughts.”

Sketching visual hallucinations. The sick polydrug addict, used hashish, opium, ether, cocaine.

AZ, schizophrenia - “It is difficult and very difficult to be saved. But you have to! You need to live. Everyone! ”.

AZ, schizophrenia - “One did not get the booty. Crashed against the rock. "

AZ, schizophrenia - “It is also necessary to save the old man! Even the bird knows It. ”

L.T., schizophrenia. The disease proceeded in the form of seizures, different in structure. These were phase depressions or manic-ecstatic states, accompanied by the vision of vivid fantastic images, fairy-tale, cosmic, alien plots. Her drawings and comments to them were reproduced by her brother, a man who is a professional artist. The patient brightly, emotionally told him that “she was present at the death of the world”, when everything around exploded and collapsed, “in the smoke and roar, human skulls flew in huge rows” and “strung” on her head, “hordes of all evil spirits, snakes settled in her head and other things, they were at war with each other. "

L.T., schizophrenia - “The death of the world and horror”.

L.T., schizophrenia - “Flower of longing”.

L.T., schizophrenia - "Madness".

LT, schizophrenia - “I am deprived of the physical shell and one thing remains - a great, harmonious, divinely bright and beautiful psychic“ I ””.

A.B., 20 years old, schizophrenia. Only a few drawings by this author have survived. They reflect such phenomena characteristic of a given disease as the "materialization" of thoughts felt by the patient as something material, schism (splitting of the psyche): "everything is scattered here - the sense organs, heart, time and space."

AB, schizophrenia - “Out of time and space”.

AB, schizophrenia - “Thoughts are things (reification of thoughts)”.

NP, schizophrenia with delusional ideas of invention. He believed that it is quite possible to invent devices that, without fuel, only due to the chosen shape and "gravity", would provide movement.

SN, 20 years old, paranoid schizophrenia. The disease manifested itself during military service. Perhaps, in contrast to the cruel and rough reality of the patient, thoughts about a different, better world, about God, began to visit.

SN, paranoid schizophrenia - “My thoughts are audible and visible: what I think, everyone hears, and thoughts-pictures appear on the screen”.

SN, paranoid schizophrenia - “I hear the voice of God. He puts the whole structure of the world and soul into my head ”.

And here's another:

A.Sh., 19 years old, schizophrenia. The disease began at the age of 13-14 with a change in character: he became withdrawn, lost all contacts with friends, relatives, stopped going to school, left home, spent time in churches, monasteries, libraries, where he “studied philosophy,” wrote “philosophical treatises ”, in which he expounded his vision of the world. It was at this time that he began to paint in a very strange manner. According to his parents, he had never painted before, and it was unexpected for them that the talent of a painter was discovered in his son, although his drawings were strange and incomprehensible.

Medicine, "I" and "Lemon Bird"

"He will die soon (Self-portrait)"

At the age of 18 he was drafted into the army, began serving in the city of Arkhangelsk. It was here that the manifestation of the disease took place: delusional ideas, hallucinations, depression appeared, made repeated attempts to commit suicide. Having entered the department, he was practically inaccessible for contact, but only in conversations with the attending physician (Muratova I.D.) did he open up the world of his psychopathological experiences. He drew a lot: he brought some of the drawings with him, others were drawn already in the hospital. The attending physician encouraged his desire to draw, provided him with paper and paints. When he was discharged, he presented the doctor with a collection of his drawings. Later, this collection became the basis of the museum of creativity of the mentally ill, and to this day is used for educational purposes.

Many drawings by A.Sh. there is an image of a bird, which he called "lemon". This is a figurative and symbolic display of the patient's inner world, of what he lives by, fenced off from reality. (The latter he usually painted in annoying red)

"Substance"

"The essence of the painter"

"A woman with a cat

"Perverts"

disease

"alcoholic and alcoholism"

"headache"

"My head"

The patient of the psychiatric clinic A.R. first took up paints and pencils already in the hospital. His works will undoubtedly be of interest not only to the attending physician, but also to a wide range of art connoisseurs.

A.R. - "Labyrinths of dreams"

Vl.T., 35 years old, chronic alcoholism. He was admitted to a psychiatric hospital several times in connection with repeated alcoholic psychoses. His illness was aggravated by a dysfunctional heredity - his sister suffered from schizophrenia. All drawings reflecting psychopathological experiences were made upon exiting psychosis and in the light interval (outside the binge). The author had an incomplete art education, was a professional master of painting techniques.

The picture “My hands occupy the whole room” reflects the pathology of perception, autometamorphopsia (somatoagnosia, “violation of the body scheme”), impaired perception of the size of one's own body, its individual parts. Arms, legs, or head appear very large / small or very long / short. This sensation is corrected by the patient's gaze at the limbs or by touch. It is observed in schizophrenia, organic brain lesions, intoxications and in other cases.

Drawings on the background of LSD reception

The first drawing was ready 20 minutes after the first dose (50 mcg)

The experiment took place as part of the US government's program for researching psychoactive drugs in the late 1950s. The artist received a dose of LSD-25 and a box of pencils and pens. He needed to draw a picture of the doctor who had given him the injection.
According to the patient: "The state is normal .. so far no effects"

Translation for - Svetlana Bodrik

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness, symptoms of which can include inappropriate social behavior, auditory hallucinations, and characteristic disorders of perception of reality. It is often accompanied by other, less serious mental disorders such as depression and anxiety.

It goes without saying that people with schizophrenia are usually unable to work or maintain relationships with others. 50% of people diagnosed with schizophrenia also abuse alcohol or drugs, thus trying to cope with the disease.

But there are other people who seek solace not in drugs and alcohol, but in art.

The drawings shown here were created by people with schizophrenia. Looking at some of them, an ordinary person can feel anxiety, and for the creators, these works help to make visible what worries them, torments them, haunts them. The desire to paint is an attempt to form and organize your inner world.

"Electricity makes you soar" is a drawing by Karen Blair, who is suffering from schizophrenia.

Note the variety of moods that appear on the faces of the creatures-growths on the head of this person - a clear example of the confusion in which a person with schizophrenia can be.

These two photographs were taken by an unknown schizophrenic artist who was trying to capture the depressing nightmare of his thoughts.

This intricate jumble of faces was drawn by the artist Edmund Monsel in the early 1900s. He is believed to have been schizophrenic.

This drawing was found in the oldth psychiatric hospital, hiscreator suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

This is how Eric Bauman portrayed his heinous illness.

In 1950, Charles Steffen, while being treated in a psychiatric hospital, zealously took up art, even drawing on brown paper. His drawings indicate that he was apparently obsessed with the idea of ​​reincarnation.

This artist suffers from a rare paranoid schizophrenia, the disease causes visual hallucinations in him. In the picture, one of his visions is a figure called "decrepitude".

Eerie, strange, but probably an accurate depiction of what a person with schizophrenia is feeling.

This drawing, titled The Essence of Mania, depicts schizophrenia as a phantom threat.

"Crazy" drawings and paintings by Karen May Sorensen, suffering from schizophrenia, have recently become available for viewing by a huge number of people, because she posted them on her blog.

Louis Wayne's Cats - Drawings dating back to the early 1900s. The artist's works changed during the period of illness, but the theme remained the same. Luis's series of fractal-like cats are often used as a dynamic illustration of the changing nature of creativity during the development of schizophrenia.

Drawing by Jofr Draak.

In this painting, the artist embodies the auditory hallucinations associated with this disease.

This sick artist feels as if he is a trap for himself.

Jofra Draak painted this in 1967. This is how hell, described in Dante's work, looks from the point of view of a schizophrenic patient.

We may never know what is going on in the minds of those with schizophrenia. The farthest in understanding this we can advance when we get acquainted with this kind of art. Most of these drawings and paintings may seem scary and filled with negativity to us, but for the artist himself, the positive moment is that he found a way to get rid of this negativity, throwing out his worries and fears on paper.

It is easy to remember that Van Gogh and Camille Claudel suffered from mental disorders. And which of the Russian artists was given the same sad diagnosis? No, these are not Kandinsky or Filonov, hypnotizing with their painting, but artists whose canvases were sometimes quite realistic. We study together with Sophia Bagdasarova.

MIKHAIL TIKHONOVICH TIKHONOV (1789-1862)

YAKOV MAKSIMOVICH ANDREEVICH (1801-1840)

A nobleman of the Poltava province and an amateur artist, Andreevich was a member of the Society of United Slavs and one of the most active Decembrists. During the uprising of 1825 he served at the Kiev arsenal. He was arrested in January of the following year, and during the analysis of the case it turned out that he had called for regicide, raised military units to revolt, and so on. Andreevich was convicted among the most dangerous conspirators, in the I category, sentenced to 20 years of hard labor. The brilliant lieutenant was sent to Siberia, where over time he lost his mind, and after 13 years of exile he died in a local hospital - apparently from scurvy. Very few of his works have survived.

ALEXANDER ANDREEVICH IVANOV (1806-1858)

The future author of The Appearance of Christ to the People arrived in Italy as a 24-year-old young man who won a retirement trip. In these warm lands, he remained for almost his entire life, constantly resisting orders to return. For more than 20 years, he persistently painted his canvas, lived in isolation, behaved gloomily.

Rumors circulated among the Russian diaspora about his mental illness. Gogol wrote: "It was convenient for some to proclaim him crazy and to dissolve this rumor in such a way that he could hear it with his own ears at every step." The artist's friends defended him, arguing that it was slander. For example, Count Fyodor Tolstoy reported in his report that the artist Lev Kiel, after the emperor arrived in Italy, “used all the intrigues to prevent the sovereign from going through the workshops of our artists, and especially does not tolerate Ivanov and presents it as a crazy mystic and has already managed to inflate this into Orlov's ears. , Adlerberg and our envoy, with whom he pisses off disgustingly, as elsewhere and with everyone. "

However, Ivanov's behavior clearly testifies that these rumors were still well-grounded. So, Alexander Turgenev described a depressing scene when, together with Vasily Botkin, they somehow invited the artist to dinner.

“No, sir, no, sir,” he repeated, growing paler and more lost. - I will not go; there I will be poisoned.<…>Ivanov's face assumed a strange expression, his eyes wandered ...
Botkin and I looked at each other; a feeling of involuntary horror stirred in both of us.<…>
- You don't know Italians yet; They are awful people, sir, and they are awkward for that. He will take it from behind the side of his tailcoat - in such a manner he will throw a pinch ... and no one will notice! Yes, they poisoned me everywhere, wherever I went. "

Ivanov was clearly suffering from a persecution mania. The artist's biographer Anna Tsomakion writes that the suspiciousness characteristic of him before gradually grew to an alarming size: fearing poisoning, he avoided dining not only in restaurants, but also with friends. Ivanov cooked for himself, took water from the fountain and sometimes ate only bread and eggs. Frequent severe pains in the stomach, the causes of which he did not know, inspired him with the confidence that someone was periodically able to inject him with poison.

ALEXEY VASILIEVICH TYRANOV (1808-1859)

The former icon painter, who was picked up by Venetsianov and taught realistic painting, later entered the Academy of Arts and received a gold medal. From a pensioner's trip to Italy, he returned in 1843 on the verge of a nervous breakdown, as they say, because of his unhappy love for the Italian model. And the next year he ended up in a St. Petersburg psychiatric hospital. There they managed to put him in relative order. He spent the next few years at home, in Bezhetsk, and then worked again in St. Petersburg. Tyranov died of tuberculosis at the age of 51.

PIMEN NIKITICH ORLOV (1812-1865)

Fans of Russian art of the 19th century remember Pimen Orlov as a good portrait painter who worked in the manner of Bryullov. He successfully graduated from the Academy of Arts and won a retirement trip to Italy, where he left in 1841. He was repeatedly ordered to return to his homeland, but Orlov lived well in Rome. In 1862, 50-year-old Orlov, by that time an academician of portrait painting, fell ill with a nervous breakdown. The Russian mission placed him in a mental hospital in Rome. He died three years later in Rome.

GRIGORY VASILIEVICH FORTY (1823-1864)

The serf artist turned out to be one of the most talented students of Venetsianov's private school. But its owner, unlike the owners of many other Venetianists, refused to give Soroka freedom, forced him to work as a gardener and limited him as best he could. In 1861, the artist finally received his freedom - from Alexander II the Liberator, along with the whole country. In the wild, Soroka defended his community, composing complaints against the former master. During one of the conflicts, the 41-year-old artist was summoned to the volost board, which sentenced him "for rudeness and false rumors" to three days of arrest. But due to illness, Soroka was released. In the evening he went to the pot shed, where he hanged himself. As it is written in the protocol - "from excessive drunkenness and the resulting sadness and insanity of reason as a result of the acquired business."

ALEXEY FILIPPOVICH CHERNYSHEV (1824-1863)

At the age of 29, this native of the "soldier's children" received the Great Gold Medal and went to retire from the Academy of Arts in Italy. There, the first symptoms of his illness appeared, which in the 19th century was called softening of the brain. His nervous breakdown was accompanied by eye disease, rheumatic pains, blurred vision and, of course, depression. Chernyshev tried to be treated in Austria, France and Switzerland, but his situation only worsened. Seven years after his departure, he returned to Russia, and his successes were nevertheless so great that Chernyshev received the title of academician. But the degradation continued, and eventually he was placed in Stein's institution for the mentally ill, where he died three years after returning at the age of 39.

PAVEL ANDREEVICH FEDOTOV (1815-1852)

When the author of The Major's Matchmaking and other textbook canvases turned 35, his state of mind began to deteriorate rapidly. If earlier he wrote satirical paintings, now they have become depressive, full of a sense of the meaninglessness of life. Poverty and hard work with a lack of light led to blurred vision and frequent headaches.

In the spring of 1852, an acute mental disorder began. A contemporary writes: "By the way, he ordered a coffin for himself and tried it on, lying down in it." Then Fedotov came up with some kind of wedding and began to squander money, preparing for it, went to a lot of friends and got married in every family. Soon the Academy of Arts was informed by the police that "a madman is being held in the unit, who says that he is an artist Fedotov." He was placed in a private institution for those suffering from mental illness, the Viennese professor of psychiatry Leidesdorff, where he banged his head against the wall, and the treatment consisted of being beaten with five whips by five people to pacify him. Fedotov had hallucinations and delusions, and his condition worsened.

The patient was transferred to the All Who Sorrow Hospital on the Peterhof road. His friend wrote that there "he screams in a rage and rages, rushes with thoughts in heavenly space with planets and is in a hopeless position." Fedotov died in the same year from pleurisy. Our contemporary psychiatrist Alexander Shuvalov suggests that the artist suffered from schizophrenia with a syndrome of acute sensory delirium with oneiric-catatonic inclusions.

MIKHAIL ALEXANDROVICH VRUBEL (1856-1910)

The first symptoms of the disease appeared in Vrubel at the age of 42. Gradually, the artist became more and more irritable, violent and verbose. In 1902, his family persuaded him to appear to the psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev, who diagnosed him with "incurable progressive paralysis due to syphilitic infection", which was then treated with very cruel means, in particular, mercury. Soon Vrubel was hospitalized with symptoms of an acute mental disorder. In the clinic, he intermittently spent the last eight years of his life, two years before his death, completely blind. He died at 54, having caught a cold on purpose.

ANNA SEMENOVNA GOLUBKINA (1864-1927)

The most famous female sculptor of the Russian Empire, while studying in Paris, twice tried to commit suicide because of unhappy love. She returned home in deep depression, and she was immediately admitted to the psychiatric clinic of Professor Korsakov. She came to, but throughout her life she had bouts of inexplicable melancholy. During the 1905 revolution, she threw herself on the harness of the Cossack horses, trying to stop the dispersal of the crowd. She was brought to trial as a revolutionary, but released as a mental patient. In 1907, Golubkina was sentenced to a year in the fortress for distributing revolutionary literature, but due to her mental state, the case was again dropped. In 1915, a severe attack of depression again put her in the clinic, and for several years she could not create because of her state of mind. Golubkina lived to be 63 years old.

IVAN GRIGORIEVICH MYASOYEDOV (1881-1953)

The son of the famous itinerant Grigory Myasoedov also became an artist. During the Civil War, he fought on the side of the whites, then ended up in Berlin. There he applied his artistic skills to survival - he began to counterfeit dollars and pounds, which he learned in Denikin's army. In 1923, Myasoedov was arrested and sentenced to three years, in 1933 he was again caught for counterfeiting and went to prison for a year.

In 1938, we see him at the court of the principality of Liechtenstein, where Myasoedov becomes a court artist, portrays the prince and his family, and also makes sketches of postage stamps. However, in the principality he lived and worked on a fake Czechoslovak passport in the name of Yevgeny Zotov, which eventually turned out and led to trouble. His wife, an Italian dancer and circus performer, whom he married back in 1912, stayed with him all these years, helping to get through trouble and sell fakes.

Prior to that, in Brussels, Myasoedov painted a portrait of Mussolini, during the war he was also associated with the Nazis, including from the Vlasovites (the Germans were interested in his ability to forge money from allies). The Soviet Union demanded that Liechtenstein hand over the collaborators, but the principality refused. In 1953, on the advice of the ex-commander of the RNA of the German Wehrmacht, Boris Smyslovsky, the spouses decide to move to Argentina, where, three months later, 71-year-old Myasoedov dies of liver cancer. The artist suffered from a severe form of depressive disorder, which can be seen in the paintings of his last period, full of pessimism and disappointment, for example, in the cycle of "historical nightmares".

SERGEY IVANOVICH KALMYKOV (1891-1967)

The twentieth century is a time when artists appear who have not gone mad, but, on the contrary, have become artists, being already mad. An interest in primitivism, the “art of outsiders” (art brut) makes them very popular. One of them is Lobanov. At the age of seven, he contracted meningitis and became deaf and dumb. At the age of 23 he ended up in the first psychiatric hospital, six years later - in the Afonino hospital, from where he did not leave until the end of his life. At Afonino, thanks to the guidance of the psychiatrist Vladimir Gavrilov, who believed in art therapy, Lobanov began to paint. In the 1990s, his naive works, made with paste from a ballpoint pen, began to be exhibited, and he gained great fame.

VLADIMIR IGOREVICH YAKOVLEV (1934-1998)

One of the most memorable representatives of Soviet nonconformism, at the age of 16, almost lost his sight. Then schizophrenia began: from his youth, Yakovlev was observed by a psychiatrist and from time to time went to psychiatric hospitals. His vision was preserved, but due to the curvature of the cornea, Yakovlev saw the world in his own way - with primitive contours and bright colors. In 1992, an almost 60-year-old artist at the Institute of Eye Microsurgery Svyatoslav Fyodorov partially restored his sight - curiously, this did not affect the style. The works remained recognizable, only more elaborated. For many years he did not leave the psychoneurological boarding school, where he died six years after the operation.

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Genius and insanity go hand in hand. Gifted people perceive the world around them a little differently, and their creation sometimes collides with the unknown, forbidden and mysterious. Perhaps this is what distinguishes their work and makes them truly ingenious.

site I remembered several amazing artists who suffered from mental disorders in different years of their lives, which, however, could not prevent them from leaving behind real masterpieces.

Mikhail Vrubel

Mikhail Vrubel, "Lilac" (1900)

They do not even try to copy the special aesthetics of his paintings - the work of Vrubel was so original. Madness overtook him in adulthood - the first signs of illness appeared when the artist was 46 years old. This was facilitated by family grief - Mikhail had a son with a cleft lip, and after 2 years the child died. The onset of bouts of violence alternated with absolute apathy; relatives were forced to put him in a hospital, where he died a few years later.

Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893)

The painting "The Scream" is written in several versions, each of which is done with different techniques. There is a version that this picture is the fruit of a mental disorder. It is assumed that the artist suffered from manic-depressive psychosis. Munch copied "The Scream" four times until he was treated at the clinic. This was not the only case where Munch ended up with a mental disorder in the hospital.

Vincent van gogh

Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night (1889)

Van Gogh's extraordinary painting reflects the spiritual quest and torment that tormented him all his life. Now experts find it difficult to say which mental illness tormented the artist - schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, but he got to the clinic more than once. The illness eventually led him to commit suicide at the age of 36. His brother Theo, by the way, also died in an insane asylum.

Pavel Fedotov

Pavel Fedotov, The Major's Matchmaking (1848)

Not everyone knows that the author of satirical genre painting died in a psychiatric hospital. He was so loved by his contemporaries and admirers that many were bothering about him, the tsar himself allocated funds for its maintenance. But, unfortunately, they could not help him - there was no adequate treatment for schizophrenia at that time. The artist died very young - at the age of 37.

Camille Claudel

Camille Claudel, Waltz (1893)

In her youth, the girl-sculptor was very pretty and unusually talented. Maitre Auguste Rodin could not help but pay attention to her. The insane relationship between the student and the master exhausted both - Rodin could not leave his common-law wife, with whom he lived for many years. Ultimately, they broke up with Claudel, and she was never able to recover from the breakup. From 1905, she began violent seizures, and she spent 30 years in a psychiatric hospital.

Francois Lemoine

François Lemoine, "The Time Guarding the Truth from Lies and Envy" (1737)

Physical exhaustion from hard work, constant court intrigues of envious people in Versailles and the death of his beloved wife affected the artist's health and drove him to madness. As a result, in June 1737, a few hours after finishing work on the next painting "The Time Protecting Truth from Lies and Envy", during a paranoid attack, Lemoine committed suicide, stabbing himself with nine strokes of a dagger.

Louis Wayne

Some of Wayne's recent works (presented chronologically) illustrating the artist's mental illness

Most of all, Louis was inspired by cats, to which he attributed human behavior in his cartoons. Wayne was considered a strange person. Gradually, his eccentricity turned into a serious mental illness that began to progress over the years. In 1924, Louis was admitted to a mental hospital after taking one of his sisters down a staircase. A year later, he was discovered by the press and transferred to Napsbury Hospital in London. This clinic was relatively cozy, had a garden and a whole cattery, and Wayne spent his last years there. Although the disease progressed, his gentle nature returned to him and he continued to paint. Its main theme - cats - remained unchanged for a long time until it was finally superseded by fractal-like patterns.

Alexey Chernyshev

Talented and mentally ill people is like two sides of the same coin. It is not for nothing that non-standard thinking, extraordinary, special people are called abnormal and crazy, and artists whose paintings do not fit into the generally accepted framework and remain incomprehensible to the viewer are advised to undergo a course of medication and psychotherapy. Of course, you can blame as much as you like on the narrow-mindedness and blinkeredness of such "advisers", but in some ways they are right. And to be convinced of this, one has only to look at the pictures that paint patients of neuropsychiatric clinics and dispensaries.

We once wrote about creativity on Cultural Studies, drawing parallels with the paintings of Bosch, Dali and modern surrealists. And they were not far from the truth. As you know, Salvador Dali was a shocking madcap with non-standard behavior and strange reactions to others. And for inspiration, he often visited mental hospitals, where he looked at pictures of patients who seemed to open doors for him to another world, far from the earthly, real world. Van Gogh's mental health is also in question, because it is not without reason that he deprived himself of an ear. But we admire his paintings to this day. Perhaps, after a while, the pictures of one of the current patients of the Department of Psychoneurology, with whose works we are now acquainting our readers, will be just as popular.

The authors of these pictures are people with a difficult, often tragic fate, and the same tragic diagnosis in their medical records. Schizophrenia and manic depression, neuroses and personality disorders, obsessive states and alcoholic psychosis, the consequences of addiction to drugs and strong medications, all this leaves a deep imprint on the patient's personality, significantly distorts his thinking and outlook on the world, and spills out in the form of pictures, schematic drawings or another kind of creativity. It is not in vain that mentally ill people are prescribed a course of art therapy without fail, and their creative works are collected and exhibited in museums and galleries not only in Russia, but also in foreign countries.

Back in the mid-70s, the first (and probably the only) Museum of the Creativity of the Mentally Ill was opened in Russia. Today it is assigned to the Department of Psychiatry and Narcology, and continues to open doors for both curious visitors and those who are engaged in the scientific research of human madness and genius.