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.
Yes but I think that perspective puts all the onus of change on the harmed individual and none on the institution that abused and broke their trust of authority, and therefore functions as a scapegoat for abuse of authority, or authority itself. “Healing” under this understanding involves getting a traumatized individual to trust their doctor, who’s authority likely chains back to the same powers who hold the reigns of their abuser, and to move on with their lives while that normalized abuser - The one creating the trauma in the first place - Continues to do untold harm. Someone labeled ODD is traumatized by authority yet the label exists not primarily to aid the victim, but to externalize blame away from the authority and onto the victim.
Furthermore I’ve at least read that more and more these days ODD “symptoms” are being reunderstood as expressions of various non-normative neurotypes that may place things like justice and ethical reciprocity at a higher priority than most. I myself have been introduced by my therapist to PDA type autism, Pathological/Persistent Demand Avoidance, which before it’s relatively recent recognition used to get a lot of people slapped with the ODD label. I don’t express my demand avoidance externally unless cornered, more it informs my entire lifestyle strategy in advance, so I escaped having a direct confrontation as a kid that would have gotten me labeled. But I identify strongly with and my heart goes out to ODD-labeled people.