Marlzey

As an Estonian, living in estonia, Estonia is not a progressive country, its incredibly backwards in more ways than one.

Backwards laws for intersex and lgbt people, they're quite bad (besides hurr durr you can marry same sex now).

Doctors are ridiculous, psychiatrists just aren't very good and try to drug you and nothing else, no actual fixing root causes. That's if you get an appointment at all. I got one, they cancelled it 30 min before the appointment. Cardiologists are even worse and more dangerous, went to one at 16 or so because I had bp of 170/140, doctor I saw first told me to eat less salt. That's it,no tests,nothing. I was never overweight either. Saw another cardiologist later in Tartu instead of Tallinn, lo and behold, they found I had a damaged heartvalve and high bp was because of stress. (Which damaged the heart valve) so had I accepted the first doctors "diagnosis" I might've dropped dead sometime in the future.

Needed to get an appointment with health minister for various issues I had with laws, started calling his aid who schedules appointments. Months of ignoring me and in the end they removed the section on their page that says you can schedule appointments. Told me that if I don't like something I can sue. That's social ministry for you. i never did get ahold of anyone in the ministry to schedule the appointment. they flat out didnt pick up the phone. SO DEMOCRATIC

Oh and on top of that most of older generations are very very racist and homophobic. And we have a huge Russian presence in Estonia, they don't even bother to learn Estonian... And our gov is a-ok with it

Really leaves a bitter taste in your mouth after years of being treated like an idiot by every government owned institution

These two are the things I could think of from the top of my head, if I remember something else I'll add it.

Edit; the psychiatrist thing , that was not my only bad encounter - before that I went to another psych, told him I'm suicidal, he told me to excersise and just let me go. ???

Before that I saw a psychologist, to whom I went after my great grandmother died and I said I was numb, she told me that maybe I was on my period and thus hormones made it so I was numb... Like what?? How does that even make sense?

edit2: heres another thing thats estonia really good at : no social safety net of any kind, so as a 19 year old who has plenty of mental illness and cannot realistically hold a job, the moment i'm done with gymnasium in like 2 months, i'll end up on the streets. i can get on disability because of ptsd, and at best i'll get 56 eur a month, more likely that its about 20 or so a month. this will also limit any chance of immigration elsewhere so its not an option. social housing, help with actually purchasing medication, food,clothes or therapy? Nah fuck you, none of that for you - go die on the streets. only real way of getting social housing is being incredibly disabled - missing limbs, severe brain development issues,etc. they still wont get more than 56 eur a month for disability btw, regardless that its not enough. For reference housing is usually around 300-400 eur or so for an "ok" place with 1 room.

edit3: That free healthcare everyone is so happy about? its not truly free. after you hit 19 and not studying/working anymore, you have to start paying for it, otherwise they wont treat you unless you pay visitation fee(a fee that you often have to pay even WITH the national insurance)

It sucks. Basically Estonia is a mini Russia that is slightly better and cleaner

so what do you propose the government to do? Create a law that requires people to be fluent in Estonian?

well yes. exactly that. want to be citizen of estonia? better know estonian. Instead they decided to force learning russian onto everyone AND made it a practical requirement toknow it to get any good jobs + government even operates in russian as well in eastern estonia..

I don't condone racism in any way, but that's pretty much everywhere in the developed world

and

It sounds like Estonia is a country facing the same issues every modern democracy does. Censorship is bullshit without a doubt, but everything you mentioned happens in representative democracies, that's just how it is.

we're not talking about this though, we're talking of whether estonia is progressive or not. Which it clearly is not.

i'm really sorry you had to live here.

Just because est has to follow mandates does not mean that they do so in practice