On February 11, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science is celebrated. In the Voronezh region there were many outstanding women scientists, among whom the native of Bogucar Nina Pavlovna Tatarenko occupies a special place. The 120th anniversary of the birth of the famous compatriot the public noted in the fall of 2020.
The well-known Soviet psychiatrist, a representative of the pathophysiological direction in psychiatry, she believed that the basis of mental illness should be considered primarily a violation of the main processes of the highest nervous activity. Scientific work, teaching and treatment of patients, professor and doctor of medical sciences devoted their lives.
Nina Pavlovna was born at the beginning of the twentieth century - on November 23, 1900 in the city of Boguchar of the Voronezh region. After the 1917 revolution, he worked as a sister of mercy in hospitals, after graduated from the Kharkov Medical Institute and graduate school at the Department of Psychiatry, in parallel working with patients. Already the first scientific work "Reflexing mechanisms in patients with schizophrenia" was based on the results, their own studies.
Since the 1930s, the name of Tatarenko became widely known in the circles of physicians. The ability of a researcher's doctor, the presence of a large number of developments in the field of psychiatry, knowledge of languages (it owned French, German and English) allowed her to follow the novelties in the field of psychiatry in foreign publications, to participate in conferences and symposia. In 1936, the All-Union Attestation Commission of the USSR approved the Tatarenko in the degree of candidate of medical sciences without defense of the thesis.
In the years of the Patriotic War, Nina Pavlovna has headed the military expert branch of a psychiatric hospital in Kazakhstan and led advice in a military hospital. During these years, I saw the light of a number of works on mental and nerve diseases of the period of wartime, then she began working on the problem of traumatic psychosis. In 1947, Tatarenko defended his doctoral dissertation. In her work, a clinical and pathophysiological analysis was presented and a classification of phantom phenomena was developed in people with amputated limbs. This work was of great importance: in the post-war time, questions of phantom phenomena were one of the most pressing problems of Soviet medicine.
In 1951, she was elected head of the vacant Psychiatry Department in Kharkov, and part-time worked as Deputy Director for the Scientific Part of the Ukrainian Psychoneurological Institute. In 1954, the professor was sent to a long business trip to the Academy of Sciences of Hungary as an adviser on the physiology of higher nervous activity in the field of psychiatry.
In the USSR, Nina Pavlovna organized several laboratories, including pathophysiological, encephalographic, biochemical, which were actively used in scientific and therapeutic work. She has developed and introduced new methods for studying mental disorders, a study of pathogenetic mechanisms of schizophrenia, vascular diseases of the brain, the effects of the skull injuries, neurosis of obsession, studied psychophysiology and the pathophysiology of perception, memory.
In scientific work, the attention of Professor focused on the methods of studying the highest nervous activity in the psychoneurological clinic. It has also developed and proposed new principles of studies under which the condition of unconditional reflexes was an indicator of the state of the main nerve processes in the cerebral cortex.
The patients loved her, believed her, she caught them in every way and in the difficult 50-60s he often helped materially. She was a protector of the rights of mentally ill not in words, but in practice. Many treated it not only for medical care, but also in search of social support.
N.P. Tatarenko prepared 6 doctors and 33 candidates of medical sciences. The topics of their work, carefully and seriously selected by her at one time, remain relevant today. In 1971, under its editors, the first psychiatry textbook was published in Ukrainian.
For many years of fruitful scientific, pedagogical, medical and social work, it was awarded government awards: the Order of the Labor Red Banner, Medals "For Valiant Labor" and "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945", "Excellent Healthcare". She was assigned a high title "Honored Worker of Science of the Ukrainian SSR."
A psychiatrist woman who has given to the healing of the mentally ill worn over 60 years of his life, 19 years old, headed by the Department of Psychiatry in the Higher Medical Academic Institution, prepared an army of scientific and clinical workers, who serve as a science about the soul of man.