Political use of psychiatry

Press, 13 May 1981, Page 20

Political use of psychiatry

Sir,—ln his article, “Political use of psychiatry” (May 2), Peter Reddaway refers to the vote of condemnation of Soviet psychiatry at the 1977 World Psychiatric Association’s conference in Honolulu. He omits to mention the undemocratic method of allocating votes in the W.P.A., by the size of their financial contributions to its budget by each national association, which gives a majority to Western associations. At that, their condemnation motion only just scraped in. Peter Reddaway also omits to mention the Soviet delegation’s challenge to produce at the conference, any of the Soviet dissidents, then living in the West, who had received psychiatric treatment in the Soviet Union, and, who, when they emigrated to the West, claimed that their treatment had been for their political beliefs, a challenge to which the Western delegations displayed an understandable reluctance to answer, because they knew very well that the emigre dissidents had indeed needed psychiatric treatment.—Yours, etc.,

M. CREEL. May 5, 1981.