Abuse of Psychiatry for Political Purposes in the USSR: A Case-Study and Personal Account of the Efforts to Bring Them to an End

Abstract

(from the chapter) The political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union originated from the concept that persons who opposed the Soviet regime were mentally ill, as there was no other logical explanation why one would oppose the best socio-political system in the world. Starting in 1971, when Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky sent a collection of documents on the alleged political abuses to the West with the request to consider them, until this very day when the political abuse of psychiatry in China is still on the agenda, the issue has on one hand resulted in fierce debates and outrage, yet on the other hand it has stimulated an ongoing debate on human rights and professional ethics. During those years the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), around which most of the discussions evolved, adopted a series of ethical codes and declarations on human rights that condemn the use of psychiatry for non-medical purposes, and also installed mechanisms to investigate complains of violations of these regulations. Yet at the same time, critics believe that the organization itself has not always implemented the regulations it imposed on its member societies, thereby triggering further debates on the issue. In this chapter, the case of political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union is used as the main example, specifically because it was a well-documented case, because it strongly influenced the concept of medical ethics and its application internationally, and because with maybe a few exceptions it is generally accepted that psychiatry in the Soviet Union was abused for political purposes in a systematic manner in the course of several decades. However, the Soviet Union is certainly not the only country where these abuses took place. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).