The idea of writing a book on the disintegrable processes of the people’s mentality occurring in Ukraine appeared in 1999, when I was taking part in the international psychiatry ANAP project (Attitude and Needs Assessment in Psychiatry Project). The project was realized by some international funds and organizations (ICCO/Ñordaid, Dutch Ministry Foreign Affairs — MATRA Program, Oak Foundation, Open Society Institute, Tridios Foundation, and Geneva Psychiatry Initiative), recruiting some specialists in the field of psychiatry and psychology. The investigation of the mental health ability and the natural mental diseases’ tendency, the research of the needs for the psychiatric help and the usage of it in Bulgaria, Hungary, Check and in some countries of the former USSR (like Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan) were among the tasks of the project.

As a researcher from Ukraine I wanted to understand what happened and is happening to people, to their mental and moral health ability in terms of longitude totalitarian pressure of the governmental system. In that period in Hamburg, Germany, the XI World Psychiatrists’ Congress was being held. More than ten thousands of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, other specialists in the field of mental health and the representatives of the psychiatric help consumers’ associations and the members of their families from 117 countries of the world took part in the Congress. The noticeable fact is that the vice-chairman of the Ukrainian State Security Service, general V. Pristaiko, made a report on “The Psychiatric Repression in the Soviet Union and Its Victims’ Rehabilitation in Present-day Ukraine”. Under the request of the Psychiatrists’ Association the President of Ukraine, L. Kutchma, approved his participation in the Congress.

Was it a repentance symbol of our authority? To my mind, Germans seemed to be more sincere. So, who we are in real?