ABSTRACT
Mental healthcare for children in the former Soviet Union was established in the 1930s. It was structured as a chain of regional child outpatient and inpatient clinics. All children from a particular district could have free service from the regional outpatient center for mentally ill children. If the disorder was severe and demanded hospitalization, the child could be sent to the regional hospital or, in complicated cases, to a specialty clinic. The main person in this system was the district child psychiatrist, who would have known the ill child, since his or her first visit to the clinic, and sometimes even several generations of the family.
