Political abuse of psychiatry, also commonly referred to as punitive psychiatry, is the misuse of psychiatry, including diagnosis, detention, and treatment, for the purposes of obstructing the human rights of individuals and/or groups in a society.[1][2]: 491 In other words, abuse of psychiatry (including that for political purposes) is the deliberate action of having citizens psychiatrically diagnosed who need neither psychiatric restraint nor psychiatric treatment.[3] Psychiatrists have been involved in human rights abuses in states across the world when the definitions of mental disease were expanded to include political disobedience.[4]: 6 As scholars have long argued, governmental and medical institutions code menaces to authority as mental diseases during political disturbances.[5]: 14 Nowadays, in many countries, political prisoners are sometimes confined and abused in psychiatric hospitals.[6]: 3 [7]
Psychiatry possesses a built-in capacity for abuse that is greater than in other areas of medicine.[8]: 65 The diagnosis of mental disease allows the state to hold persons against their will and insist upon therapy in their interest and in the broader interests of society.[8]: 65 Psychiatry can be used to bypass standard legal procedures for establishing guilt or innocence and allow political incarceration without the ordinary odium attaching to such political trials.[8]: 65 The use of hospitals instead of jails also prevents the victims from receiving legal aid before the courts in some countries, makes indefinite incarceration possible, and discredits the individuals and their ideas.[9]: 29 In that manner, whenever open trials are undesirable, they are avoided.[9]: 29
The political abuse of the power entrusted to physicians, and particularly psychiatrists, has a long and abundant history, for example during the Nazi era and the Soviet rule when religious and political dissenters were labeled as "mentally ill" and subjected to inhumane "treatments".[10][11] In the period from the 1960s up to 1986, abuse of psychiatry for political and ideological purposes was reported to be systematic in the Soviet Union, and occasional in other Eastern European countries such as Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.[12][8]: 66 The practice of incarceration of religious and political dissidents in psychiatric hospitals in the Eastern Bloc and the former USSR damaged the credibility of psychiatric practice in these states and entailed strong condemnation from the international community.[10][13] Political abuse of psychiatry also takes place in the People's Republic of China.[1] Psychiatric diagnoses such as the diagnosis of "sluggish schizophrenia" in political dissidents in the USSR were used for political purposes.[14]: 77
^Helmchen, Hanfried; Sartorius, Norman (2010). Ethics in Psychiatry: European Contributions. Springer. p. 491. ISBN 978-90-481-8720-1.
^Глузман, Семён (January 2010). Этиология злоупотреблений в психиатрии: попытка мультидисциплинарного анализа. Нейроnews: Психоневрология и нейропсихиатрия (in Russian) (20). Archived from the original on 2015-11-17. Retrieved 2014-01-02.
^Semple, David; Smyth, Roger; Burns, Jonathan (2005). Oxford handbook of psychiatry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-19-852783-1.
^Metzl, Jonathan (2010). The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease. Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0-8070-8592-9.
^Noll, Richard (2007). The encyclopedia of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Infobase Publishing. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-8160-6405-2.
^Bonnie, Richard (2002). "Political Abuse of Psychiatry in the Soviet Union and in China: Complexities and Controversies" (PDF). Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. 30 (1): 136–144. PMID 11931362. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 September 2011. Retrieved 12 December 2010.
^ abcdBritish Medical Association (1992). Medicine betrayed: the participation of doctors in human rights abuses. Zed Books. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-85649-104-4.
^ abVeenhoven, Willem; Ewing, Winifred; Samenlevingen, Stichting (1975). Case studies on human rights and fundamental freedoms: a world survey. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. p. 29. ISBN 978-90-247-1780-4.
^ abCite error: The named reference USS1984 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Shah, Ruchita; Basu, Debasish (July–September 2010). "Coercion in psychiatric care: Global and Indian perspective". Indian Journal of Psychiatry. 52 (3): 203–206. doi:10.4103/0019-5545.70971. PMC 2990818. PMID 21180403.
^Cite error: The named reference Stan2013 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Declan, Lyons; Art, O'Malley (2002). "The labelling of dissent — politics and psychiatry behind the Great Wall". The Psychiatrist. 26 (12): 443–444. doi:10.1192/pb.26.12.443.
^Katona, Cornelius; Robertson, Mary (2005). Psychiatry at a glance. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 77. ISBN 978-1-4051-2404-1.
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