User talk:HG/workshop/Abuses of psychiatry

This page is for working with Psychiatric abuses, per the deletion review. HG | Talk 14:42, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Here's a sample dab.

Due to GFDL concerns, I've reverted the temporary cut-and-paste work in the Soviet psychiatry and in Psychiatry articles. Still need to deal w/Falun Gong, already reworked. Thanks to Dhaluza for assistance.HG | Talk 14:23, 8 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Larisa Arap material --> Soviet psychiatry
 * Falun Gong material --> Persecution of Falun Gong‎
 * Ethical standards --> Professional ethics
 * Soviet, China generally --> created subsection Psychiatry —Preceding unsigned comment added by HG (talk • contribs) 22:32, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Misc -- e.g. links in Ethical code and World Psychiatric Association

N.B. A user has created both and a stub for a main article, Political abuses of psychiatry.  HG | Talk 18:04, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Psychiatric abuse is a generic term for real and alleged mistreatment of people under psychiatric care by doctors, middle-medical personnel or orderlies. There are several highly polarized views of varying standards about what constitutes "Psychiatric abuse". Actual mistreatment can range from simple malpractice, to human rights violations up to and including torture and euthanasia. The term is used by scholars to describe state sanctioned oppression and abuse against dissidents. It is also used by critics of Psychiatry to criticize mainstream treatments believed to be clinically effective, such as electroconvulsive therapy. The the World Psychiatric Association’s 1996 "Declaration of Madrid" is an internationally accepted standard for ethical psychiatric care, and many recent claims of psychiatric abuse cite violations of its provisions as the basis for this determination.

Scientology and antipsychiatry viewpoints
"Psychiatric abuse" is a major doctrinal concern of the Church of Scientology, which is publicly, often vehemently, opposed to all psychiatric treatment. The Church maintains a museum against psychiatry (Psychiatry: An Industry of Death) and an institute that regards psychiatry as a human rights abuse (Citizens Commission on Human Rights). From the Scientology standpoint, the phrase "Psychiatric abuse" is defined broadly.

Similarly, the Psychiatric Survivors Movement and the movement of antipsychiatry, among others, believes that non-consensual electroshock treatment, psychosurgery, involuntary confinement and medication, all accepted by most psychiatrists as sometimes necessary for the severely mentally ill, and all commonly accepted standards of care, are also considered Psychiatric abuse.

Suppressing dissent
In both religious and secular societies, psychiatric abuse has been one of a number of methods used to suppress dissent and enforce conformity available to be employed by restrictive regimes.

Abuse of Soviet dissidents
From the late 1940s onward, psychiatric hospitals in the Soviet Union were used as prisons to isolate political dissidents, break them mentally and physically, and discredit their ideas. At least 365 people were misdiagnosed, confined, and subjected to a variety of abuse such as beatings, painful lumbar punctures, electric shocks, and forced drugging. This abuse was first exposed to the outside world in 1971. There has been a report of a similar case more recently. In 2007 Larisa Arap alleged that mental patients at Apatity mental were treated improperly. As a result of her exposure of these conditions, she states she was detained in the same mental hospital she wrote about. She reported on her experience of being abused while hospitalized and also on  her assessment that sane but 'inconvenient' people were detained there. She made other allegations based on the reported experiences of other patients. Her situation is being investigated.

Persecution of Falun Gong
In 1999 the Peoples' Republic of China banned Falun Gong and began a crackdown on its practitioners. The Chinese government has admitted a sharp increase in the psychiatric detainment of Falun Gong adherents, blaming alleged harmful effects of the practice. One government source quoted by Robin Munro claimed that 30 per cent of the mental patients in China were Falun Gong. (A Peoples' Daily Online story dated September, 2006, stated that China had 16 million mental patients, and mentions a new law that fines people who reveal the identity of mental hospital patients.) Lu and Galli state that the perversion of mental health facilities for the purpose of torture of Falun Gong practitioners is widespread in China. However, that report has been challenged by Harry Wu, political activist for human rights in China, who said the evidence came from two witnesses who did not see the alleged organ harvesting first hand. In February 2005 a World Psychiatric Association delegation visited China with little result.

The World Psychiatric Association (WPA) and the Chinese Society of Psychiatrists (CSP) negotiated an agreement to respond to allegations from around the world that the Chinese government used the psychiatric establishment to punish members of Falun Gong for their political and religious beliefs. WPA representative Dr. Abraham Halpern expressed doubt that the charges of torture, fraudulent diagnoses and human rights violation involving thousands of people should be dismissed as mere 'failures in diagnosis.' Disagreeing with Dr. Halpern, Arthur Kleinman, M.D., a professor of medical anthropology and psychiatry at Harvard University, expressed the view that  the allegations of psychiatric abuse of Falun Gong members are exaggerated and some of the accounts "distorted." He noted that many cases came to light in which Falun Gong adherents appeared to have a diagnosable mental illness, including obvious symptoms of psychosis, "and were put in psychiatric hospitals for good reasons".

Electroconvulsive therapy
The use of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) is a controversial issue in psychiatry. Social critical movements such as Scientology argue that ECT in an of itself constitutes abuse.

Ethical standards in psychiatry
In 1977, spurred by a case documented by Human Rights Watch of political psychiatric abuse in the Soviet Union, the World Psychiatric Association adopted the Declaration of Hawaii, a basic set of ethical standards for psychiatrists everywhere. To expand and clarify the ethical rules that had been proposed, the WPA adopted the Madrid Declaration. Every psychiatrist is enjoined to follow the Madrid Declaration rules, which prohibit human rights violations, such as neglecting to obtain informed consent for treatment, forcing treatment on patients, failing to respect their dignity and confidentiality, and failing to treat patients in their best interest. Prior to the Madrid Declaration, Serbian psychiatrist, poet, soccer coach and politician, Radovan Karadzic was indicted  as a war criminal,  the first doctor so indicted since the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial in 1946.