Campaign Against Psychiatric Abuse was a group that was founded by Soviet dissident Viktor Fainberg ^[1] in April 1975 and participated in the struggle against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union from 1975 to 1988. ^[2]

The Campaign involved national and international medical bodies ^[3] to reveal the monstrous abuse of human rights through the misuse of psychiatry. ^[4]

Participants

The English branch was set up on 5 September 1975 ^[5] as the British section of the Action Committee Against Abuses of Psychiatry for Political Purposes ^[6] and composed of psychiatrists, other doctors, and laymen ^[7] including David Markham, Max Gammon, William Shawcross, George Theiner, James Thackara, Tom Stoppard, Marina Voikhanskaya, Eric Avebury, ^[8] Helen Bamber, ^[9] and Vladimir Bukovsky. ^[10]

The chair of the organisation was British psychiatrist Henry Dicks. ^[11] From the fall of 1976, its director was Viktor Fainberg. ^[12] Committees similar to the Campaign Against Psychiatric Abuse were later set up in France, Germany, and Switzerland. ^[13]

Activities

Campaigns of the British section of the group included a rally against psychiatric abuse in July 1976 in Trafalgar Square ^[7] and led to the release of Vladimir Borisov, Vladimir Bukovsky and Leonid Plyushch. ^[2] The group issued correspondence, bulletins, and other documents which are deposited in the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. ^[2] The group was so effective that by the early 1980s Soviet psychiatry had pariah status. ^[14] Opposition in Britain including the Campaign Against Psychiatric Abuse led the Royal College of Psychiatrists to establish the Special Committee on the Political Abuse of Psychiatry in 1978. ^[15] The Campaign Against Psychiatric Abuse actually never said what its fallback position was, this must mean that the Campaign favoured confinement of the innocent in prisons instead of mental hospitals. ^[16]

References

Sources

Further reading

• Hurst, Mark. British human rights organizations and Soviet dissent, 1965–1985. Bloomsbury Academic; 2016. ISBN  978-1472527288.