Baks, Johannes

Abstract

Robert van Voren (1959) is Chief Executive of the international foundation ‘Human Rights in Mental Health-FGIP, an international foundation for mental health reform. He is also Executive Director of the Andrei Sakharov Research Center for Democratic Development and Professor at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania, and Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia.

In the 1980s Robert van Voren coordinated international campaigns afainst the political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union and became head of the Global Initiative on Psychiatry in 1986. The organization successfully campaigned to have the Soviets removed from the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) in 1983 and have conditions placed on their return to the WPA in 1989.

Starting in 1990-1991, Van Voren and his foundation developed an extensive program to support mental health reformers in the (former) USSR to humanize mental health care. The organization gradually developed into what is now the Federation Global Initiative on Psychiatry, with member organizations in Bulgaria, Georgia, Lithuania, Sri Lanka, The Netherlands and the United States. It has implemented many hundreds of projects in Europe, Africa, Aisa and the Americas and is particularly active in countries such as Ukraine, where it provides a wide range of support efforts to counter the psychological consequences of war.

Robert van Voren was elected Honorary Fellow of the British Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1997, became Honorary Member of the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association in 2004 and was knighted by Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands in 2005 for his work as a human rights activist. In 2003 he was granted Lithuanian citizenship in recognition of his contribution to the development of an independent Lithuania. In 2022 he was awarded the prestigious Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health.