One of the worst human rights abuses in the later years of the Soviet Union was the use of psychiatry to repress dissidents. If you questioned the system you risked being diagnosed with a mental illness - 'sluggish schizophrenia' - and being confined to a closed institution.
In a podcast from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Robert van Voren discusses the worrying signs that this tactic is being revived in the nations that have succeeded the Soviet Union.
And it doesn't happen in the UK?
ReplyDeleteLook up William Sargant, David Owen and then a well known psychiatric clinic in Roehampton for links.
Slow burning schizophrenia might hav e been invented by the Russians but I think we can look a little closer to home - in the present day - for abuse of psychiatry to ensure political dissidents are shut up.