The Soviet system used psychiatry as a weapon by diagnosing political opponents as mentally ill in order to confine them as patients instead of trying them in court. Anyone who challenged the state such as dissidents, writers, would-be emigrants, religious believers, or human rights activists could be branded with fabricated disorders like sluggish schizophrenia. This turned normal political disagreement into supposed medical pathology and allowed the state to present dissent as insanity.

Once labeled in this way, people were placed in psychiatric hospitals where they could be held for long periods without legal protections. Harsh treatments were often used to break their resolve. The collaboration between state security organs and compliant psychiatrists created a system where political imprisonment was disguised as medical care, letting the Soviet regime suppress opposition while pretending it was addressing illness rather than silencing critics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union

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[–] Kuori@hexbear.net 46 points 1 month ago (3 children)

u.s. psychs digging around inside a 15 year old girl's brain with an icepick for fun looking back at their soviet counterparts like "mmm I think your methods may be harmful and immoral"

fucking eat me

[–] Rom@hexbear.net 21 points 1 month ago

For example Rosemary Kennedy was lobotomized at age 23 because she was intellectually disabled and "becoming increasingly irritable and difficult."

[–] FALGSConaut@hexbear.net 17 points 1 month ago

God learning about the history of lobotomies, how they were done, why, and to whom fucked me up big time. So many cases of men forcing lobotomies on women because they wanted a passive bang maid, it's a crime against humanity that basically no one ever saw any consequences for

[–] corvidenjoyer@hexbear.net 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Early skepticism toward lobotomy emerged in Soviet psychiatry. As reports on leucotomy and lobotomy surfaced in Soviet medical journals between 1936 and 1937, followed by more extensive reviews of Freeman and Watts's initial studies in 1939, Soviet reviewers expressed alarm at the procedure's severe complications and a reported 5 percent mortality rate, while also questioning its efficacy, observing that symptoms like fear, depression, and agitation often resolved spontaneously without necessitating such a dramatic procedure. These reviews suggested lobotomy should not be performed in the USSR.[153]

The Soviet Union officially banned the procedure in 1950[157] on the initiative of Gilyarovsky.[158] Doctors in the Soviet Union concluded that the procedure was "contrary to the principles of humanity" and "'through lobotomy' an insane person is changed into an idiot".[149] By the 1970s, numerous countries had banned the procedure, as had several US states.[159]

[–] LeninWeave@hexbear.net 16 points 1 month ago

Genuinely amazing that apparently only the Soviets were able to say "hey people, maybe the solution to mental illness is not to permanently destroy parts of people's brains for no reason and with no benefit".