The Soviet system used psychiatry as a weapon by diagnosing political opponents as mentally ill in order to confine them as patients instead of trying them in court. Anyone who challenged the state such as dissidents, writers, would-be emigrants, religious believers, or human rights activists could be branded with fabricated disorders like sluggish schizophrenia. This turned normal political disagreement into supposed medical pathology and allowed the state to present dissent as insanity.
Once labeled in this way, people were placed in psychiatric hospitals where they could be held for long periods without legal protections. Harsh treatments were often used to break their resolve. The collaboration between state security organs and compliant psychiatrists created a system where political imprisonment was disguised as medical care, letting the Soviet regime suppress opposition while pretending it was addressing illness rather than silencing critics.
In America black people are diagnosed schizophrenic or psychotic because they talk about institutional racism to white clinicians that don’t believe them
Somewhat relatedly, the W Bush administration expanded mental health screening and recordskeepint, and broadened the use of somewhat dangerous antipsychotics for non psychotic conditions in the wake of the Patriot Act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Freedom_Commission_on_Mental_Health
Pretty sure America does that.
So it’s like lemmy.ml
Oh you mean like they want to do with trump derangemnt syndrome? Yeah, it’s out of the dictatorship playbook.
The problem is psychiatry in general. Always been a tool for hegemonic control.
From the article, western sources claim some 15k people affected over the entirety of the Soviet Union. So yeah, something that did happen, but still quite a minor thing for a country with 300 million people over 70+ years of existence.
For comparison, over 700k people experience homelessness today in the USA, which is arguably at least as damaging to mental (let alone physical health), and if we count the number of people who have experienced homelessness over the past 70 years in the USA it’s several million if not tens of millions.
Sounds oddly familiar to “If you’re against the online safety act you’re siding with pedophiles.”
Only considered it?
May want to check out what’s happening in USA and UK.
Fucking Trump wants to deport citizens for disagreeing with him.
I live in the UK. Being against the UK government is not considered a mental illness.
Don’t let this distract you from the fact that America and capitalism and the CIA are all bad and this is all ultimately their fault
In the US, they do that today. Also if you’re old
Reminder that they are trying to make antisemitism a mental illness. Not racism, not homophobia, not transphobia. Just antisemitism
Sounds like “Trump derangement syndrome”
No -ism is immune to hubris. I still believe in people sharing in the profit of their labor, and appreciate this post clarifying one of the many ways dissent can be crushed, albeit temporarily.
If one’s idea is genuinely good, it better be able to handle dissent. Once gulags get involved, you’ve long ago lost the people’s belief, and are on a timer.
Evil never perseveres. Never has, never will.
Evil never perseveres. Never has, never will.
Huh? Have you not been paying attention for the last several decades?
Seriously. Its on the level of delusion of the super stonk bros covered in “This is Financial Advice”.
Try reading a book 😎
Amen for [real] democracy.
Try be a dissident in democracy, and you’re just doing more democracy.
You should check out the history of USA sometime.
Nah.
Humanity is on a hard fought, slow, and with many setbacks, trend towards a better world. Evil is pushed out by good but not without the blood, sweat, and tears of many good people.
This is very common in authoritarian governments. They did the same kind of thing in Pinochet’s Chile, for example.
