Criminals can use Psychiatry as a weapon

From the periodical Russia Today - a look at how psychiatry can get out of control.

Mentally ill or mentally healthy - it's up to a psychiatrist to determine, and a patient's life often depends on this decision. Almost half of all mental health patients in Russia are being mis-diagnosed, according to a human rights organisation.

Inna and her fourteen-year-old daughter Nastia say they were victims of a false diagnosis.

Inna couldn't sleep for several days because of stress she had experienced after a car accident. She says she took some medicine to help her fall asleep, and during the night her daughter drank the water with the medicine - by accident. The mother and daughter both got poisoned, and called an ambulance. Both woke up in psychiatric hospitals – Inna charged with attempted murder.

On the basis of a psychiatric examination, a court has now decided Inna needs to be put into a psychiatric clinic. The two are currently in hiding.

Valery has a different story. He is a 53-year-old engineer, and he has spent the last years of his life fighting for his apartment. He says criminals wanted it, so they decided to get rid of him by locking him up in a psychiatric ward. They found a psychiatrist who would help out by saying Valery was ill and needed to be put into a hospital. Additional testing later proved that Valery was quite healthy.

He is now trying to prove he was a crime victim. He wants those responsible punished. And his life's goal has become warning innocent citizens about these kinds of crimes.

The Civil Commission on Human Rights operating in Russia says, according to research, almost half of the patients who are told they have a psychiatric illness actually have a regular physical sickness, and don't need psychiatric help.

Mikhail Vinogradov - a prominent Russian criminologist and psychiatrist - says the reason for abuse in psychiatry is that doctors are human too: "Among them, there are very good doctors and there are bad doctors. But there are definitely less bad ones. And naturally, there are criminals among them, like in every social sphere - among priests, policemen, bureaucrats. They are all human," he says.

The expert says what happened to Inna was an attempt of suicide and murder.

"To simply fall asleep, you would take one or two of the pills that she took. The only reason you would take more, is to kill yourself. The doctors did the right thing by taking both Inna and her daughter to a clinic. The mother in this case was trying to kill herself and to take her daughter with her. This is an absolutely obvious case in psychiatric study. The only question is - was she acting under affect or is she psychologically ill?" doctor Vinogradov asks.

And he says getting someone's property by putting them in a psychiatric clinic nowadays happens very often.

"Valery's case is very typical. These stories take place often, when people want to get someone else's living space, there are sometimes fraudulent psychiatrists assisting in the crime," he says.

According to the psychiatrist's statistics, about 67% of Russia's population is either undergoing or needs some form of psychiatric treatment. Among these, 19% are chronically ill. Doctor Vinogradov says the statistics are similar in Europe.[...]