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Athens and beyond: Soviet psychiatric abuse and the World Psychiatric Association

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Sidney Bloch*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Australia
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The recent Eighth World Congress of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), held between 12 and 19 October 1989 in Athens, was reminiscent of the previous World Congress in 1983 in Vienna, and the one before that in 1977 in Honolulu. Once again the issue of the Soviet political misuse of psychiatry reared its ugly head, and dominated the Association's proceedings. In 1977 the critical debate revolved around what position the WPA should adopt concerning the abuse. In a cliff-hanger vote, the WPA passed a resolution condemning the political misuse of psychiatry but explicitly citing the Soviet case (Bloch & Reddaway, 1984). In the absence of any improvement in the situation by the time of Vienna and in the virtual certainty that the Russians would have been expelled from the organisation, the Soviet Psychiatric Society resigned from its membership in January 1983. In order to forestall a precipitous and premature readmission, the Royal College of Psychiatrists proposed at the Vienna Congress that the Soviets would be welcomed back into the fold but only when they had demonstrated “sincere co-operation”, and when there had been concrete evidence of “amelioration” of the abuse.

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Articles
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1989

References

Bloch, S. & Reddaway, P. (1977) Russia's Psychiatric Hospitals. London: Gollancz.Google Scholar
Bloch, S. & Reddaway, P. (1984) Soviet Psychiatric Abuse: The Shadow Over World Psychiatry. London: Gollancz.Google Scholar
Gluzman, S. (1989) On Soviet Totalitarian Psychiatry. Amsterdam: International Association on the Political Use of Psychiatry (an interesting account of contemporary Soviet psychiatry, available from IAPUP, P.O. Box 3754, Amsterdam 1001 AN).Google Scholar
Reddaway, P. (1989) The current situation in Soviet psychiatry regarding political abuses. Psychiatric Bulletin, 13, 529532.Google Scholar
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