Psychiatry under duress: some ethical and practical considerations

✍ Scribed by J.L.T. Birley

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 54 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0957-9664
• DOI: 10.1002/cbm.131

✦ Synopsis

Almost since its inception, the 'Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry' has had Bob Bluglass as one of its patrons. When it began it was called the International Association for the Prevention of Political Abuse of Psychiatry. It changed its name in 1992, after political dissent in the Soviet Union had ceased to be a crime. Now it is an educational organisation, of which I have had the honour to be Chairman, very active in 'East Europe' which stretches from Prague to Vladivostock. Its respectable Swiss title derives from the location of its legal office, but the driving force remains, as always, its Secretary, the remarkable Robert van Voren operating from the more raffish and more exciting city of Amsterdam.

The political abuse of psychiatry can be regarded as one form of 'psychiatry under duress'. The best documented account of doctors under duress is that published in 1992 by the British Medical Association -Medicine Betrayedthe particiption of doctors in human rights abuses, including torture. An analysis of the conditions which led to such abuses suggested that the following were necessary: