Trepanation of Soviet Psychiatry

This year the Sofiya Publishing House issued a book titled Soviet Psychiatry: Delusion and Intention the dedicated to the phenomenon of misuse of psychiatry in the Soviet period. Symbolically, the book was presented at a club inherited by the Security Service of Ukraine from the former KGB, whose members played a significant role in the fate of those sent to the camps with a so-called psychiatric ticket. There is another telling fact. Those who should be interested in this broadly advertised publication most of all, health service workers, did not ask for even one copy, while the Security Service immediately purchased fifty copies for its students. This might be explained with the results of a poll conducted in 1991 by psychiatrist Semen Hluzman and his colleagues among doctors working with psychiatric service: only half of those polled believed it necessary to publish materials on abuses in psychiatry, considering this an essential condition for bringing it to a healthy state.

The authors themselves in course of gathering materials came to the conclusion that the book was necessary for several reasons, even if it has appeared too late. First, its heroes do not stand on a podium, as Mr. Hluzman put it, since the downfall of the Soviet regime was not caused by any group of now renowned dissidents. Second, today’s psychiatry is still a sphere convenient for abuse: instead of a total political order, there are separate but far from rare cases when irresponsible persons “recover” for a few days to sign some documents to somebody’s profit, or when somebody expands his dwelling space at the expense of a person suddenly alleged to be going mad, reports Natalia MELNYK, The Day.