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.
So, this gave me a touch of the Deja Vu. And then I realized why. This is exactly the same thing Scientologists claim about the American psychiatric system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_and_psychiatry
It’s also come up among the Falun Gong and the modern Protestant Evangelical Church
While there’s ample opposition to the criminalization of mental infirmity, the folks who seem the loudest in opposition to psychiatry as some form of evil Soviet plot tend to be individuals and organizations that benefit from a members with untreated illness.
Cool baseless opinion.
A problem with even well intentioned institutionalization is that once somebody is perceived as mentally unwell everything they do is looked at through a clinical lens. This can make it difficult for people who were misdiagnosed or who have recovered to convince people they are well.
Rosenhan Experiment.
Sure. And because the symptoms of a mental illness can be far more subtle and amorphous than a physical malady, there’s very little you can do to ahem Go Clear as it were. Enter groups, like Scientology and Christianity, that claim they can definitively prove you are Saved from what ails you.
But I’d argue the root of the problem - whether you’re a secularized Soviet-Era communist or a liberal Catholic Capitalist - is whether you’re allowed to show any amount of compassion at an institutional level. The horror of Russian Stalinism (and American Reaganism) is largely in the eugenics-inspired belief that the only cure for illness is executing anyone pronounced unwell. The allure of pseudo-scientific opposition to psychiatry is their promise of a definitive panacea for everything, rather than a long-term treatment plan that requires human labor and patience and genuine empathy just to mitigate the most acute symptoms.
Generally, abusers make a lot of money, and sometimes can end up being louder than the actual victims. Because they make a full time job of being loud. Good luck getting your psychiatry victim association to the com budget of scientology.
Or competing with alpha-male-mindset-influencers who spend all their income on finding brand new ways of turning bad breakups and loneliness into various sales. I think they get by far the most public attention on those subjects, might be wrong.
There’s a bunch of similar situations with companies selling well-being stuff, conspiracy theorist news sites, etc.
I just wanted to point out it’s a general thing