Political Abuse of Psychiatry in China

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The article Political Abuse of Psychiatry in China deals with the politically motivated abuse of psychiatry in the People's Republic of China by the state. The article Political Abuse of Psychiatry covers this topic in general.

introduction

Political abuse of psychiatry is the misappropriation of psychiatry with its medical means and measures, such as diagnosis , detention and treatment , in order to discredit individuals and large sections of the population, to remove them from the public and to deprive them of their human rights . In other words, psychiatric abuse is, among other things, a politically conscious act to diagnose undesirable citizens who do not need or want psychiatric interventions or treatment.

As definitions of mental illness expanded, psychiatrists around the world participated in human rights violations to include political disobedience as a definition. In many countries, the basis was created for psychiatrists to participate in the abuse of their patients, as happened to individual individuals or minorities during the Nazi period ( Action T4 ) in Germany, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

As scholars have long reported, government and medical institutions classify a potential threat to their authority during political unrest as mental illness. This is why political prisoners are now being locked up in psychiatric hospitals in many countries and abused there.

Psychiatry has a built-in capacity for abuse that is greater than any other area of medicine . The “diagnosis of mental illness” allows the state to detain people against their will and to treat them “in their interest and in the wider interest of society”. In a monolithic state, psychiatry can be used to circumvent the normal legal process of indicting guilt or innocence, allowing political incarceration without the smack associated with such political negotiations. The use of clinics instead of prisons prevents the victims from receiving legal assistance before the courts, thus makes unlimited imprisonment possible and discredits the people and their ideas. In this way, open processes that are undesirable are avoided.

Examples of Psychiatric Abuse

Examples of political abuse of power entrusted to doctors and especially psychiatrists are abundant in history and could be seen during the Nazi era and in the Soviet Union, especially Stalinism , when political dissidents were labeled " insane " and inhuman "Treatments" have been subjected. It has been reported that from 1960 to 1986 psychiatric abuse for political purposes was systematically used in the Soviet Union , and occasionally 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 those states and led to strong condemnation by the international community. Political abuse of psychiatry also occurs in the People's Republic of China . For political purposes, the same psychiatric diagnoses as used by political dissidents in the USSR, such as "sluggish schizophrenia", were used.

History of Political Abuse of Psychiatry in China

In 2002, Human Rights Watch published Dangerous Minds: Political Psychiatry in China Today and its Origins in the Mao Era by Robin Munro, based on documents he received. The British researcher Robin Munro, a sinologist who wrote his dissertation in London after a long stay in China, had traveled to China several times to visit libraries in provincial cities. There he collected a large amount of literature that was labeled "secret" but was still openly accessible. This literature included historical analyzes, dating back to the days of the Cultural Revolution, relating to articles and reports on the number of people admitted to psychiatric hospitals for complaining about a number of things. Munro found that the involuntary restriction of religious groups, political dissidents and whistleblowers in China had a long history. Psychiatric abuse began in the 1950s and 1960s and grew dramatically throughout the Cultural Revolution. It reached its climax during the period of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), then under the rule of Mao Zedong and the Gang of Four , who had established a very repressive and harsh regime. No deviation or opposition was tolerated, either in thought or in practice.

The documents reported massive political abuse of psychiatry during Mao Zedong's rule, declaring millions of people insane. In the 1980s there was a political link in up to fifteen percent of all forensic psychiatric cases, according to official documents. In the early 1990s, the number had dropped to five percent, but the percentage rose rapidly once the persecution of Falun Gong began.

Official Chinese psychiatric literature clearly shows that the Communist Party had long institutionalized the term "political endangerment" in the diagnostic armory of Chinese psychiatry and incorporated it into the main concept of psychiatric dangerousness .

Despite international criticism, the People's Republic of China appears to continue its political abuse of psychiatry. Within the international psychiatric society, the political abuse of psychiatry is high on the agenda in the People's Republic of China and has given rise to recurring disputes. The abuses appear to be even more widespread in the People's Republic of China than in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, and include the detention of "supplicants," human rights activists , union activists , supporters of the Falun Gong movement and people who speak out about the arbitrariness of the people complain to local authorities.

According to reports, until 1989 there were hardly any known high-security research institutions in China. But since then the Chinese authorities have established the entire network of special forensic psychiatric clinics called Ankang (psychiatry) , which translates as "peace and health". "But anyone who has experienced an ankang from the inside associates terror, torture and murder," said Wang Wanxing, who was ill-treated in a psychiatric hospital for 13 years. At the time, China had 20 ankang institutions, staffed by the Ministry of State Security. The psychiatrists who worked there wore uniforms under their white doctor's coats. Zeit Online reported at the end of 2005 that Beijing had decided to increase the number of police psychiatric hospitals in China from the current 22 to 125 in order to use them as intimidation against its citizens and thus deter them from strikes and protests.

Psychiatric care in China

The political abuse of psychiatry in China appears to occur only in institutions under the supervision of the police and the Ministry of State Security, and not in any other government sector. Because mental health care in China falls under a total of four sectors that are hardly interconnected. First, these are Ankang institutions of the Ministry of State Security; second, the institutions belonging to the police; thirdly, those falling under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Social Affairs; and fourth, those belonging to the Ministry of Health. Both the Ministry of State Security's and the police's sectors are closed sectors, so hardly any information leaks out. That is why the psychiatrists who work in the hospitals belonging to the Ministry of Health have no contact with the Ankang institutions and so actually have no idea of ​​what has happened and is taking place there. Therefore, they could sincerely state that they were ignorant of the political abuse of psychiatry in China.

Forensic psychiatry

In China, the structure of forensic psychiatry was initially largely identical to that in the former USSR. On its own, this is not uncommon, as the same psychiatrists who promoted the political abuse system of psychiatry in their own country, the USSR, visited Beijing in 1957 as delegates from the Moscow Serbsky Institute to meet their Chinese "brothers" to help. As a result, diagnostics couldn't be much different from what it was in the Soviet Union. The only difference was that the Soviets preferred "sluggish schizophrenia" as a diagnosis and the Chinese usually insisted on a diagnosis of paranoia or "paranoid" schizophrenia . The consequences, however, were the same: long stays in a psychiatric clinic, involuntary neuroleptic treatment , torture and mistreatment, all of which were aimed at breaking the will of the victims.

Diagnosis "Political Madness"

In Chinese law, the term “political harm to society” is defined as legally dangerous mentally ill behavior. Accordingly, the police bring “politically insane people” to psychiatric clinics. "Politically insane" are defined as people who write reactionary letters, make speeches against the government or who "express their opinion on important domestic and international issues". According to Yu Xin, a professor of psychiatry at Peking University , psychiatrists are often caught involved in such cases, unable or unwilling to defend themselves against the police. Liu Feiyue, founder of the Chinese human rights organization Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch , has a database of people admitted to psychiatric hospitals after petitioning the Chinese government for wrongdoing. The Chinese government estimated in 2004 that more than 10 million citizens submit a petition or go to the government and seek help there every year. In May 2010, Sun Dongdong, director of forensic psychiatry at Beijing University, said, "I have no doubt that at least 99% of China's insubordinate, persistent 'professional' supplicants are insane." that to date, the most common victims of psychiatric abuse are political dissidents, supplicants, and Falun Gong supporters .

World Psychiatric Association

In the early 2000s, Human Rights Watch accused China of imprisoning Falun Gong practitioners and dissidents in a number of Chinese mental hospitals run by the Public Security Bureau. The World Psychiatric Association (WPA) requested access to these clinics, but China refused.

The WPA then tried to narrow the problem by presenting it as a Falun Gong issue while creating the impression that the movement's followers are unlikely to be sane; that it is a cult that has likely brainwashed its followers, and so on. There was even a diagnosis of "qigong syndrome" that was applied to the exercises in Falun Gong. It was the unfair game aimed at avoiding the political abuse of psychiatry in China from dominating the WPA's agenda. Levent Kuey, general secretary of the EPA, said his organization had taken no further action. He justified this by saying that it was better to help China improve its mental health system rather than ostracize it.

In August 2002, the WPA General Assembly was held during the World Congress of the Psychiatric Association in Yokohama . The question of the Chinese political abuse of psychiatry was one of the last items on the agenda. When the subject was discussed during the General Assembly, the exact nature of the compromise emerged. It was stated that the Psychiatry Association would send a commission of inquiry to China to investigate the political abuse of psychiatry. The visit was scheduled for the spring of 2003 to ensure that a report could be presented during the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in May and during the annual meeting of the British Royal College of Psychiatrists in June / July providing information on the results of the investigation. However, after the 2002 World Congress, the half-hearted attitude of the WPA Executive Committee in Yokohama emerged: it was an omen of a longstanding policy of diversion and postponement, because the 2003 fact-finding mission never came about, and when a visit to China finally took place it was just a scientific exchange. In the meantime, political abuse of psychiatry in China continued unabated, but the WPA did not seem to care.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

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