Political abuse of psychiatry in Russia

Political abuse of psychiatry implies a misuse of psychiatric diagnosis, detention and treatment for the purposes of obstructing the fundamental human rights of certain groups and individuals in a society.

The strong resistance to introducing the modern practices of forensic psychiatry is not due to disparities in schools or views, but the fact that the reform of the system would mean the end of corruption.

[11] Discrediting the citizens by instituting far-fetched proceedings to obtain a ground for examination is a favorite tactic of officials whose interests are hurt by the active members of public.

[16] The Nezavisimiy Psikhiatricheskiy Zhurnal documented the history of numerous religious trials, demonstrated the total groundlessness of the charges of "gross harm on mental health", and evolved their political and ideological background.

[17] Known for his intolerance and radicalism, Dvorkin has nothing in common with science and ranks even followers of Nikolai Rerikh and the religious communities of Yakov Krotov and Grigori Kochetkov among "totalitarian sects.

"[15] In 2014, the experts of the Serbsky Center received the medical documents about the mental health condition of Alexander Dvorkin from a psychoneurological dispensary, studied them and concluded that he needed to be constantly supervised by a psychiatrist and take psychotropic drugs.

[19] A number of human rights organizations including the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia criticized the use of psychiatry in "deprogramming" members of "totalitarian sects.

[19] In January 2000 in St. Petersburg, chief psychiatrist Larisa Rubina charged leader of Sentuar (the local offshoot of the Church of Scientology) Vladimir Tretyak with inflicting psychological damage on his coreligionists.

[19] In 2005, Igor Kanterov [ru], a professor of the Moscow State University, wrote that psychiatrists and psychologists were actually being involved in a very unattractive occupation, stigmatizing "alien" religions and their followers, who were about 1 million first-class citizens of the Russian Federation, and putting them "on the basis of a list of them" in the category of "psychic terrorists.

Pashkovskiy at the same time never resort to Russian laws regulating activity of religious associations, and it can hardly be considered accidental, since all the original sets of the authors are in flagrant contravention of current legislation.

"[22] However, in Kanterov's words, peer-reviewed publications use the term "totalitarian sects" as a key concept that naturally generates psychiatric disorders and produces horror stories about "psychic terrorism," "non-lethal weapon of mass destruction," "usurpation of belongings and savings of followers," "recruitment," etc.

[22] In 2006, Yuri Savenko stated that a first large relapse of the use of psychiatry for political purposes in post-Soviet Russia during recent decade was struggle against "totalitarian sects.

[24] This report was distributed to all public prosecutors' offices of the country and to the presidents of the educational institutions despite the fact that its scientific inadequacy was emphasized by not only the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia (the IPA), but also the Russian Society of Psychiatrists since all imputed cases of illness, suicide, family breakdown, etc.

[26] When writing about this case, Savenko charged the Serbsky Institute with "having pernicious effect on Russian medicine" and warned that the psychiatric leadership "is now completely under the shadow of the state.

In 2000, the commune was smashed up by Luberetskiy RUBOP, with gross violations of law, the members of the organization was wrongly accused of creating "an illegal paramilitary group."

In particular, Yuriy Davydov was sentenced to imprisonment and compulsory treatment with a diagnosis of "schizophrenia, delusional ideas of perestroika and reformation of society" made by the Serbsky Center.

[30] In December 2003, Ivan Ivannikov, who lectured at the Saint Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance for 38 years, was committed to the city psychiatric hospital after a long dispute with a contractor over repairs to his apartment.

[32] Law enforcement agencies, aware of the inefficacy of their collected body of evidence (the human rights activist used the documented facts in his agitational campaign), resorted to his sending to a mental hospital.

[32] The documents told a murky story that Usmanov found somewhere a gas pistol, remade into a fire one, shot at the head of the unit of the Magadan psychiatric hospital and injured him in the leg.

[31] Imendayev's act of insanity was filing a number of legal complaints against local officials, judges, prosecutors, and police, alleging violation of court procedures, corruption, and cronyism—charges that are typical of modern Russia.

[35] In 2005, Nikolai Skachkov, who protested police brutality and official corruption in the Omsk region of Siberia, spent six months in a closed psychiatric facility, with a diagnosis of paranoia.

After he spent two days in its violent unit without having food, water, and medicines, he was recognized as sane by the commission of doctors of the Omsk psychiatric hospital and discharged.

[41] Impartial legal proceedings would not have found formal components of a crime in the charges brought against Novikov, but his old psychiatric diagnosis along with the expansive interpretation of the concept of "danger" as the reason for his involuntary hospitalization allowed to solve his case in the way most convenient for authorities.

[48] On 25 August 2012, this examination entailed an open letter by Russian psychologist Aleksandr Asmolov who wrote, "In the eyes of the civilized world, our science, psychology in the first place, is turned into an ideological weapon of punishment and repression.

[51]Savenko responded that the strikingly unethical nature of the resolution by the Ethical Commission (of 12 December 2013) showed in the ascription to the IPA open letter to the WPA, hosted on the website, of phrases that were never used there.

[52] He adds we see a rather awkward performance of a social role using the old scenario of accusatory campaigns of Soviet times to have the possibility to refer to "the opinion of the professional public" for use abroad.

[54][55] On 19 July 2021, Dmitry Nadein, Irkutsk political activist and former member of Alexei Navalny staff, was sentenced to compulsory treatment for his reposts on social media.

The case of Rakevich v. Russia considered in the European Court of Human Rights gave grounds for the following assertion by the head of MHG legal programs Natalia Kravchuk: … Russian legislation in this area is featureless and vague.

'[68] As mentioned in 2010, reports on particular cases of psychiatric abuse continue to come from Russia where the worsening political climate appears to make an atmosphere in which local authorities feel able to again use psychiatry as a means of frightening.

[70] In October 2014 an artist Petr Pavlensky cut his ear while sitting naked on the roof of the infamous Serbsky Center in protest against punitive psychiatry.