Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-995ml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T15:48:23.409Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Soviet Special Psychiatric Hospitals

Where the System was Criminal and the Inmates were Sane

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Nanci Adler*
Affiliation:
Associate of Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry, Egelantiersgracht 44, 1015 RM Amsterdam, Netherlands
Semyon Gluzman
Affiliation:
Ulitsa Geroev Stalingrada 27A, kv. 621, 254210, Kiev, Ukraine
*
Correspondence

Abstract

The subversion of psychiatric intervention for political purposes in the USSR during the 1970s and 1980s resulted in both intra-psychic and subsequent adaptational dysfunction in those dissidents who physically survived it. Incarceration in special psychiatric hospitals subjected the inmates to a sense of helplessness under the control of a malevolent power, futility, despair, danger from close and contentious contact with hardened criminals and the violently insane, overdosage with mind-altering and body-distorting neuroleptic drugs, and a Kafkaesque ambiguity concerning the specific terms of institutionalisation. Discharge did not bring release from continued threats and the eroded social networks to which the inmates returned subjected them to a new set of stressors. While some families remained intact and provided necessary support during the re-entry period, many families had been destroyed either by the circumstances of the family member's incarceration or by the length of the victim's stay in the psychiatric hospital. Wives left, people died, friends deserted, jobs evaporated, and often there was not even a home to accept them. Social agencies were either hostile or indifferent to their plight. Many felt like they had been thrown overboard from a prison ship without a life preserver. It was the proverbial transition from the frying pan into the fire.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adler, H. M. (1977) Interpersonal psychotherapy: a communications perspective. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 31, 573.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Adler, N. (1993) Victims of Soviet Terror: The Story of the Memorial Movement, pp. 109, 111. Westport: Praeger.Google Scholar
Avrutsky, G. Y. & Neduva, A. A. (1988) Odnako sulfozinoterapiya kak odin iz effektivnykh metodov lecheniya nekotorykh form psikhicheskikh zabolevanii bolee rasprostranena. In Lechenie Psikhicheski Bolnykh (rukovodstvo dlya vrachey), p. 157. Moscow: Izdatelstvo Meditsina.Google Scholar
Barton, R. (1959) Institutional Neurosis. Bristol: John Wright.Google Scholar
Bloch, S. & Chadoff, P. (1991) (eds) Psychiatric Ethics (2nd edn), p. 495. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bloch, S. & Reddaway, P. (1977) Russia's Political Hospitals, pp. 30, 34. London: Gollancz.Google Scholar
Bloch, S. & Reddaway, P. (1981) Diagnosis: Political Dissent. London: Gollancz.Google Scholar
Cohen, E. A. (1954) The German Concentration Camp: A Medical and Psychological Study. Amsterdam: Paris.Google Scholar
Cordon, D. R., Edelman, L. I., Lagos, D. M., et al (1988) Psychological Effects of Political Repression. Buenos Aires: Sud-Americana Planeta.Google Scholar
Eitinger, L. & Strom, A. (1967) Mortality and Morbidity after Excessive Stress. New York: Universitet Forloget.Google Scholar
Frankl, V. (1990) Chelovek v Poiskakh Smysla, p. 267. Moscow: Progress.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1961) Asylums. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Helweg-Larcen, P., et al (1952) Famine Disease in German Concentration Camps. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard.Google Scholar
Kafka, F. (1980) Der Prozess, p. 89. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag.Google Scholar
Kinzie, J. D., Sack, W. H., Anoell, R. H., et al (1986) The psychiatric effects of massive trauma on Cambodian: I. The children. American Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 25, 370376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landau, L. A. (1910) O Paranoialnykh Sostoyaniyakh Sredi Dushevnobolnykh Katorgi. St Petersburg.Google Scholar
Vremya, Novoye (1991) Novoye Vremya, 5, 32.Google Scholar
Radil-Weiss, T. (1986) Menschen unter extremen Bedingungen: einige medizinische und psychologische aspekte des konzentrationslagers Auschwitz. Zeitschrift Klinischer Medezin, 41, 19791986.Google Scholar
Speed, N., Engdahl, B., Schwartz, J., et al (1989) Posttraumatic stress disorder as a consequence of the POW experience. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 177, 147153.Google Scholar
Strom, A. (1968) (ed.) Norwegian Concentration Camp Survivors. New York: Universitet Forloget.Google Scholar
Waynik, M. (1985) Paranoia as a cultural phenomenon: treatment of an Indian physician. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 39, 587592.Google Scholar
Westermeyer, J. & Wahmenholm, K. (1989) Assessing the victimized psychiatric patient. Hospital and Community Psychiatry, 40, 245249.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.