(SOFIA) - Bulgaria pledged Monday to shut its dilapidated mental homes after the European Court of Human Rights condemned Sofia over an inmate held for years after being wrongly diagnosed as schizophrenic.

"A strategy of closing mental homes for adults, currently being worked out, will happen over a period of 10 years at least," Valentina Simeonova, deputy social affairs minister, told a news conference.

Rights groups pressured Sofia after the Strasbourg court ruled in favour of Rusi Stanev, 55, who said he was held against his will in a "decaying, dirty and rarely heated" home some 400 kilometres (250 miles) away from his home town.

Patients in the Pastra home were not provided with any therapeutic activities and Stanev was unable to leave after being stripped of his legal rights. His guardian repeatedly refused his requests to apply for a release.

He was only let out three times for 10 days each during his 2002-2006 stay and was forcefully taken back to the home after failing to return within the deadline the last time.

A private psychiatric report in August 2006 found that Stanev was incorrectly diagnosed as schizophrenic and that his symptoms were instead due to his alcohol abuse.

The ECHR Grand Chamber ruled on January 17 that the man's health "was being damaged by his stay in the home" and ordered Bulgaria to pay him 15,000 euros ($19,700) in damages.

"This case must trigger reforms of the mental homes systems and the whole judicial disability notion in Bulgaria and the other east European countries, where the situation is similar," the head of the human rights Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, Krasimir Kanev, said Monday.

About 4,000 adults and 1,200 minors live in around 50 mental homes in Bulgaria. The government launched two years ago a wide-reaching effort to improve conditions and close all children's institutions.

The government aims to replace the homes with more modern institutions and to encourage families to house their relatives while they receive treatment during the day.

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Bulgaria pledges to shut mental homes