Political abuse of psychiatry
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Political abuse of psychiatry is the purported misuse of psychiatric diagnosis, detention and treatment for the purposes of obstructing the fundamental human rights of certain groups and individuals in a society.
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 political dissenters were labeled as "mentally ill" and subjected to inhumane "treatments". In the period from the 1960s up to 1986, abuse of psychiatry for political purposes was reported to be systematic in the Soviet Union, and occasional in other Eastern European countries such as Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. The practice of incarceration of political dissidents in psychiatric hospitals in Eastern Europe and the former USSR damaged the credibility of psychiatric practice in these states and entailed strong condemnation from the international community. Political abuse of psychiatry also takes place in the People's Republic of China.
See also
- Political abuse of psychiatry in the United States
- Antipsychiatry
- The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease
- Global Initiative on Psychiatry
