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Sluggish schizophrenia or slow progressive schizophrenia was a diagnostic category used in the Soviet Union to describe what was claimed to be a form of schizophrenia characterized by a slowly progressive course; it was diagnosed even in patients who showed no symptoms of schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders, on the assumption that these symptoms would appear later. It was developed in the 1960s by Soviet psychiatrist Andrei Snezhnevsky and his colleagues, and was used exclusively in the USSR and several Eastern Bloc countries, until the fall of Communism starting in 1989. The diagnosis has long been discredited because of its scientific inadequacy and its use as a means of confining dissenters. It has never been used or recognized outside of the Eastern Bloc, or by international organizations such as the World Health Organization. It is considered a prime example of the political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union.
Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky was a Russian-born British human rights activist and writer. From the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, he was a prominent figure in the Soviet dissident movement, well known at home and abroad. He spent a total of twelve years in the psychiatric prison-hospitals, labour camps, and prisons of the Soviet Union during Brezhnev rule.
There was systematic political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union, based on the interpretation of political opposition or dissent as a psychiatric problem. It was called "psychopathological mechanisms" of dissent.
Viktor Aleksandrovich Nekipelov was a Soviet Russian poet, writer, Soviet dissident, and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. He spent about nine years in prison for his participation in the Moscow Helsinki Group.
Soviet dissidents were people who disagreed with certain features of Soviet ideology or with its entirety and who were willing to speak out against them. The term dissident was used in the Soviet Union (USSR) in the period from the mid-1960s until the Fall of Communism. It was used to refer to small groups of marginalized intellectuals whose challenges, from modest to radical to the Soviet regime, met protection and encouragement from correspondents, and typically criminal prosecution or other forms of silencing by the authorities. Following the etymology of the term, a dissident is considered to "sit apart" from the regime. As dissenters began self-identifying as dissidents, the term came to refer to an individual whose non-conformism was perceived to be for the good of a society. The most influential subset of the dissidents is known as the Soviet human rights movement.
The Serbsky State Scientific Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry is a psychiatric hospital and Russia's main center of forensic psychiatry. In the past, the institution was called the Serbsky Institute.
The 1968 Red Square demonstration took place in Moscow on 25 August 1968. It was a protest by eight demonstrators against the invasion of Czechoslovakia on the night of 20–21 August 1968 by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, crushing the Prague Spring, the challenge to centralised planning and censorship by communist leader Alexander Dubček.
Psikhushka is a Russian ironic diminutive for psychiatric hospital. In Russia, the word entered everyday vocabulary. This word has been occasionally used in English, since the Soviet dissident movement and diaspora community in the West used the term. In the Soviet Union, psychiatric hospitals were often used by the authorities as prisons, in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally. As such, psikhushkas were considered a form of torture. The official explanation was that no sane person would be against socialism.
Andrei Snezhnevsky was a Soviet psychiatrist whose name was lent to the unbridled broadening of the diagnostic borders of schizophrenia in the Soviet Union, the key architect of the Soviet concept of sluggish schizophrenia, the inventor of the term "sluggish schizophrenia", an embodier of history of repressive psychiatry, and a direct participant in psychiatric repression against dissidents.
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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. In other words, abuse of psychiatry is the deliberate action of having citizens psychiatrically diagnosed who need neither psychiatric restraint nor psychiatric treatment. 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. As scholars have long argued, governmental and medical institutions code menaces to authority as mental diseases during political disturbances. Nowadays, in many countries, political prisoners are sometimes confined and abused in psychiatric hospitals.
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Viktor Isaakovich Fainberg was a Russian philologist, prominent figure of the dissident movement in the Soviet Union, participant of the 1968 Red Square demonstration, and the director of the Campaign Against Psychiatric Abuse.
Political abuse of psychiatry implies a misuse of psychiatric diagnosis, detention and treatment for the purposes of obstructing the fundamental human rights of certain groups and individuals in a society. In other words, abuse of psychiatry including one for political purposes is the deliberate action of getting citizens certified, who, because of their mental condition, need neither psychiatric restraint nor psychiatric treatment. 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. As scholars have long argued, governmental and medical institutions code menaces to authority as mental diseases during political disturbances. Nowadays, in many countries, political prisoners are sometimes confined and abused in mental institutions. Psychiatric confinement of sane people is uniformly considered a particularly pernicious form of repression.
In the Soviet Union, systematic political abuse of psychiatry took place and was based on the interpretation of political dissent as a psychiatric problem. It was called "psychopathological mechanisms" of dissent.
In the Soviet Union, a systematic political abuse of psychiatry took place and was based on the interpretation of political dissent as a psychiatric problem. It was called "psychopathological mechanisms" of dissent.
Robert van Voren is a Dutch human rights activist, sovietologist and historian.
The Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes was an offshoot of the Moscow Helsinki Group and a key source of information on psychiatric repression in the Soviet Union.
In 1965 a human rights movement emerged in the USSR. Those actively involved did not share a single set of beliefs. Many wanted a variety of civil rights — freedom of expression, of religious belief, of national self-determination. To some it was crucial to provide a truthful record of what was happening in the country, not the heavily censored version provided in official media outlets. Others still were "reform Communists" who thought it possible to change the Soviet system for the better.
Marina Voikhanskaya is a Soviet-British psychiatrist who opposed the detention of patients who were committed to Soviet psychiatric hospitals for their beliefs, and not for mental health reasons. She migrated to the UK in 1975 and campaigned against the abuse of psychiatry for political purposes and for the release of her son Misha from the Soviet Union. She lives in Cambridge, UK.
References
- ↑ Makeyeva 2013; Mosby 1977; Thorne ( 1977a , 1977b )
- 1 2 3 Cook 2012, p. 203.
- ↑ McCleskey 1985, p. 31.
- ↑ Janner 1977.
- ↑ Ukrainian Weekly 1976.
- ↑ Lader 1977 , p. 189; McKane 2001
- 1 2 New Scientist 1976.
- ↑ McKane 2001.
- ↑ Rappaport 2001, p. 46.
- ↑ Boobbyer 2009, p. 465.
- ↑ Bloch & Reddaway 1977, p. 328.
- ↑ Sakharov Hearing 1977 , p. 182; Harper 1977; Heinrichs 1977
- ↑ Bukovskiĭ 1987, p. 19.
- ↑ Belton 2012, p. 270.
- ↑ Luty 2014.
- ↑ Clare 1986.
