Eastern Europe

Abstract

This chapter tries to offer an image of clinical psychology in Eastern Europe, by looking at the history of the domain, the current work settings, and training and licensing systems. As nowadays the field of clinical psychology is quite divergent among Eastern European countries, the beginning of psychology as a science and its development under the communist regime were somewhat similar. The scientific domain of psychology was introduced in Eastern Europe by former students and collaborators of Wilhelm Wundt, who started their own laboratories in their native countries (e.g., Russia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria). Following the installation of the communist regime, psychology was for many years subsumed to soviet psychology, with negative consequences like limiting access to western works, or censuring citation of western authors, which created a wide knowledge gap between Eastern Europe and western society. The domain of clinical psychology specifically was also affected by the negative view of mental illness prevalent in Eastern European countries, particularly enforced in the Soviet Union. Given the view that mental illness was believed to be either caused by the perception of social inequalities, which supposedly had been solved by communism, or by chemical imbalances, which were subject to medical treatment alone, there was little room for psychologists to approach mental health issues. This view still persists to this day in Eastern Europe, with psychologists still holding a limited role in assessing and treating mental conditions.

Currently, clinical psychologists mostly work in hospitals, psychiatric clinics, child protection services, forensic settings, and private practice. They usually conduct psychological assessment, but some of them also practice psychotherapy. In Eastern European countries, the accessibility of treatment options for mental illness is lower than in the west, and, usually, there is a very limited coverage of psychotherapy services by the national insurance systems, but the differences among countries and between urban and rural areas are very pronounced. The training and licensing system for clinical psychologists is also different among countries, although there has been a general trend towards an increasing demand for psychological training, making clinical psychology a rather popular career choice for the youngsters.