Abstract
The current situation in Soviet psychiatry needs a surrealist of Kafka's skill to describe it. On the one hand, an increasing range of Soviet journals have, since last November, been forthrightly saying what Soviet dissidents and Western observers have said for 20 years. This is that politically motivated abuse of psychiatry has taken place in the USSR on a large scale for decades, causing enormous human suffering. Second, some of these journals point out that abuses, though much reduced in scale, continue to occur today.
Highlights
They say that a few accidental mistakes occurred in cthaeutipoausst aansd aprroedsuucltingof "phsyypcehrdiaitargisntossebs"e,ingbuotvtehralyt such mistakes cannot occur, thanks to new legis lation and administrative reforms
Tsuhrereacluirsrtenotf Ksiatufkatai'osn skiinll Stoovdieetscprisbyechiita. tOryn ntheeedosnea hand, an increasing range of Soviet journals have, since last November, been forthrightly saying what Soviet dissidents and Western observers have said for 20 years
The reason why the Foreign Ministry has pressed for re form is that it has been working for nearly three years to improve the human rights image of the USSR in the West, and psychiatric abuse has been one of the ugliest warts on that image
Summary
Tsuhrereacluirsrtenotf Ksiatufkatai'osn skiinll Stoovdieetscprisbyechiita. tOryn ntheeedosnea hand, an increasing range of Soviet journals have, since last November, been forthrightly saying what Soviet dissidents and Western observers have said for 20 years. TOryn ntheeedosnea hand, an increasing range of Soviet journals have, since last November, been forthrightly saying what Soviet dissidents and Western observers have said for 20 years This is that politically motivated abuse of psychiatry has taken place in the USSR on a large scale for decades, causing enormous human suffer ing. The psychiatric leaders know that if they were to allow serious reform, it would soon sweep them away They have long presided over a branch of medicine which, in addition to harbouring violators of the Hippocratic Oath led by themselves, is inefficient, scientifically backward and even obscur antist, expensive to the state, and probably at least as corrupt as most of Soviet medicine. The US psychiatric del egation gained insight into this system thanks to receiving considerably more access than previous delegations to patients, records, and institutions, but this will not make it inoperative
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