"Serious abuse of human rights in the name of psychiatry is widespread but largely unrecognized... Psychiatry... takes on the role of...[an] international police force over behaviour and the repression of political and social dissent. We find psychiatry guilty of the combination of force and unaccountability, a classic definition of totalitarian systems."

Excerpt from the verdict of the 5th International Russell Tribunal on Human Rights in Psychiatry (see http://www.freedom-of-thought.de).

It is a commonly-held belief that psychiatry helps more than harms people. In this article, I want to expose these myths through an analysis of the ways in which psychiatry results in serious violations of our human rights. I will specifically address the issues of involuntary committal and forced treatment. Contrary to common understandings, involuntary committal is generally experienced as imprisonment, and forced psychiatric treatment is experienced as assault, punishment or torture.

Involuntary Committal and Social Control

Social control involves rules, policies and laws (written or unwritten, explicit or implicit) that the state and its agencies use to eliminate or control dissident or problematic individuals and groups. This is frequently accomplished by stigmatizing, punishing, criminalizing or imprisoning such groups.

As an agency of the state, psychiatry is given the power of judge, jury, sentencer, and jailer of citizens labeled “mentally ill”. Psychiatrists judge people who act weird, strange or nonconformist by diagnosing them as “mentally ill”, psychotic” or “schizophrenic”. Psychiatrist then decide which form of punishment is “appropriate”; and they have the power to sentence people to psychiatric facilities for “observation and assessment” or involuntary committal. Typically, involuntary and “voluntary” patients are confined on locked wards for several weeks or months.

Thanks to mental health legislation, forced confinement in a psychiatric facility is legal in every province across Canada and every state in the United States. In Ontario each year, many thousands of innocent citizens are forced into psychiatric facilities, while still more are admitted “voluntarily” after being pressured by family or friends. A disproportionate number of involuntary patients are poor, homeless, people of colour, or working class. Unfortunately, the statistical information that could reveal systemic classism and racism in the “mental health system” are non-existent or classified. Health ministries don’t publish psychiatric hospital admissions by class, race or ethnicity.

Stripped of mental health legalese or psychobabble, involuntary committal means being locked up against your will in a psycho-prison, after you’ve been found to be “suffering from a mental disorder” and labeled a “danger to one’s self and/or other people” or “potentially dangerous”. As neither “mental disorder” nor “danger” are precisely defined in provincial mental health acts, these key terms are arbitrarily interpreted and frequently abused by psychiatrists and other doctors.

Involuntary committal means losing your freedom for weeks, months or longer. Since involuntary committal forms have no fixed date of release, patients don’t know when they’re coming out, unlike prisoners in the criminal justice system who are given a fixed release date. Involuntary committal is basically preventive detention, which means locking up people on the suspicion they might commit a criminal or violent act. Despite the fact that it has never been possible to predict whether someone will commit a criminal or violent act, this kind of preventive detention is perfectly legal in Canada, the United States, the UK and other “free and democratic” countries.

Soon after you’re involuntarily committed, you lose other human rights. The right to privacy is violated when an institution’s staff confiscates valuables, reading material, or randomly searches a patient’s room. The right to freedom of communication and association is violated by strict restrictions on telephone calls and visiting hours. The right to be treated with dignity and respect is violated by degrading labels, regimentation, locked doors, and solitary confinement.

In short, involuntary committal means you’re a political prisoner of psychiatry and the state–not a medical patient free to leave the hospital or reject treatment whenever you wish. As a psychiatric prisoner, you’re also criminalized since your name, psychiatric history, and diagnosis are given to the police. Hundreds of thousands of other Canadian citizens have not only been locked up in psycho-prisons, but have also been forcibly treated. Forcible treatment can include being assaulted with powerful mind-altering chemicals (“medication”) and/or electroshock therapy (“ECT”).

In criminal law, unwanted touching is assault. Not in psychiatry. People locked up as “involuntary” are also frequently drugged against their will, or without their informed consent. In psychiatry, the ethical-legal principle of informed consent is a cruel sham because it’s routinely and intentionally violated, particularly when patients are not informed of the common and serious effects of psychiatric medications.

Forcible Treatment

During the last 30 years, many psychiatric survivors have told me that their doctors never informed them of common and serious “side effects” of psychiatric drugs, particularly the neuroleptics (“antipsychotics”) such as Haldol, Modecate, Clozapine, Zyprexa, and Risperidone to name a few, as well as “antidepresants” like Prozac and Paxil which trigger violence or suicide. Some of the neuroleptic “side effects” are seriously disabling and include neurological disorders such as parkinsonism, tardive dyskinesia, tardive dementia, and neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS). All of these side effects are indications of brain damage.

NMS is particularly serious and more widespread than the medical-psychiatric establishment is willing to acknowledge. Published clinical studies clearly show that 2 to 3 percent of people prescribed neuroleptics will develop NMS, which has a 25-30 percent fatality rate! Further, deaths caused by or related to psychiatric drugs are rarely acknowledged. To admit to these possible effects, and to inform patients prior to treatment, would threaten psychiatric power, and undermine psychiatric social control. Psychiatrists also refuse to inform their patients about safe non-medical alternatives such as holistic methods, diet and exercise, meditation, self-help groups, and supportive housing–another violation of “informed consent”.

Electroshock is another outrageous violation of human rights. Electroshock should have been abolished years ago, as many anti-psychiatry and advocacy groups have repeatedly recommended to governments and human rights organizations. In Canada and the United States, hundreds of citizens including many shock survivors and anti-psychiatry activists have publicly protested against this “treatment” as a crime against humanity and want it abolished. Unfortunately, no senior or women’s organizations have spoken out against electroshock, despite the fact that elderly citizens, particularly elderly women, are the prime targets of this allegedly “safe, effective and lifesaving treatment”, which has already caused an epidemic of brain damage and hundreds of deaths in the US, Canada and the UK.

In psychiatry, denial and lies about the devastating effects of electroshock are the rule. For example, the Canadian Psychiatric Association (CPA) still flatly denies brain damage can result from electroshock therapy. Like the American Psychiatric Association, the CPA irresponsibly minimizes permanent memory loss despite the evidence that has accumulated over 50 years of study. These organizations continue to deny that there are shock-related deaths. Canadian and American shock doctors continue to promote “ECT as “ safe, effective and lifesaving”.

Fighting for Alternatives

Building a movement that can resist these repressive measures directed towards those labeled “mentally ill” are significantly hampered by mental health legislation and the mainstream media in Canada and the US, which perpetuate the myth of the “violent mental patient”. This myth is perpetuated despite the fact it has been thoroughly exposed as false in several scientific studies published in various medical-psychiatric journals. Nonetheless, it is difficult to build support when many people fear the “mentally ill” and feel that violations of rights in the name of “public safety” are justified. This pervasive bigotry must be challenged at every opportunity.

The obstacles facing anti-psychiatry activists are many. One goal is to abolish the psychiatric system because it is essentially inhumane and anti-democratic, another repressive police force. Another goal must be to replace psychiatry with non-coercive, non-medical, humane and survivor-controlled alternatives such as 24-hour crisis centres and drop-ins, holistic methods, affordable and supportive or safe houses, self-help and advocacy groups in our communities. In the meantime, we should expose forced psychiatric procedures such as involuntary committal, community treatment orders, forced drugging, and electroshock as unethical, if not criminal.