Does psychiatry eventually benefit from its Nazi record?

I would like to discuss the above statement.

What perspectives do you have on German Nazi psychiatry? Is it talked about where you live or completely forgotten? Do you maybe believe that remembrance is the duty only of the country where those crimes have been perpetrated?

For many years, action T4 had been forgotten. Relatives of victims corresponded with the hospitals asking for their relatives' record. The hospitals lied to them in saying the records were lost even though they were stored, for example in Hadamar, in the cellar.

Today it has become kind of hip to "remember" the victims of T4. Memorials have been established and are now run by the public welfare organizations which back then were perpetrators. The memorials are not the achievements of these organizations though, in fact, they made it very difficult for those who wanted to do research on what had happened to all the dead inmates. In Hadamar, the head physician who unlocked the cellar with the records in the 80s even was removed. I only know this because in my local activist group there is a retired psychiatrist who worked in that hospital in the 80s.
Still, there are many lies around T4. For example, if you visit a memorial, you will get the impression that eugenics was an invention of the Nazis and that psychiatry was abused by the Nazis to first sterilize and later kill psychiatric inmates. Especially the latter makes me angry. Out of 60 psychiatrists who were introduced to action T4, only one was opposed to it. And he was still a eugenicists and advocated sterilization. The whole eugenics movement was mainly run by psychiatrists in Germany. I am sure they were pleased when they finally were free to experiment on their patients. Only few perpetrators were punished. Some were rehabilitated with the help of citizens' initiatives (sick, I know), one was even rehabilitated by famous physicist Max Planck.

As I said, today it is kind of hip to "account for the past" and to "remember". In 2011, the German Psychiatric Association said sorry to the families of the victims. Pretty delayed effort. They now want to establish some kind of "task force" to investigate the role of their association during the Nazi era. What makes me sick to my stomach is that that association, which receives six- to seven-digit moneys from the pharmaceutical industry every year is so bold as to ask the public for "charity" for their "task force".
I get the feeling that psychiatry somehow benefits from its Nazi crimes. They were so unbelievably cruel that people do not dare to look at the context and to what happened before and after the Nazi era. Plus, psychiatrists can brag about how progressive, modern and humane psychiatry is today.
The policy of exactly that organization states (no kidding) that it would be inhumane not to forcibly treat a person.

Much of what we have learned from both Nazi and especially USSR psychiatry is being used in the modern day.

Spazierklavier wrote:What makes me sick to my stomach is that that association, which receives six- to seven-digit moneys from the pharmaceutical industry every year is so bold as to ask the public for "charity" for their "task force".

Here in the USA we have this group of phonies called NAMI or National Alliance on Mental Illness thats bold enough to call themselves "advocates" for the mentally ill that also takes millions from the pharmaceutical industry and then asks the public for charity.

In 2004 backed up by pharmaceutical money NAMI opposed the placement of "black box" warnings on antidepressants determined to cause suicide in under-18 year olds, and in 2006 opposed black box warnings on ADHD drugs causing heart attack, stroke and sudden death in children in 2006. Despite overwhelming evidence of serious adverse cardiac events and sudden deaths caused by ADHD drugs, in 2006 NAMI took the position that the “black box” warning on ADHD drugs was “premature.”

Lilly alone donated at least $3 million to NAMI. For its part, NAMI promotes the increased use of psychotropic drugs and wile posing as patient "advocates" uses the millions drug company money to lobby for laws allowing mental patients to be subject to violence and threats to force them to take psychiatric drugs. The drugs most often prescribed for involuntary patients -- Lilly's Zyprexa (olanzapine) and Janssen's Risperdal (risperidone) -- that cause debilitating, indeed, lethal effects.

Does the NAMI also deal with the history of American psychiatry? I am especially thinking of the racist psychiatric practices during the 60s and 70s when physicians got credit for invasive experiments on African American adults and children in order to find the biological cause of their "inadequate" behaviour. Is there any observable remorse?

I listened to an interesting interview some months ago. A German nursing scientist did his PhD in Canada. Its title is "Caring and Killing - Nursing and Psychiatric Practice in Germany 1931-1943". In it he explores the role of nursing records in the manufacturing of patients' identities as "mentally ill" and "unfit". Keep in mind that these records were upon which psychiatrists based their decision on whether or not to sterilize or murder a person. One of his other findings is that the whole framework of psychiatry as it was in place before and during the Nazi era was one very important factor in making T4 possible at all.
He told that at nursing congresses, people were very interested in his work and some nurses even admitted: "Oh, we actually do some of that today..." and really reflected on their work.
Whereas, when he was invited to a DGPPN (that is the German psychiatric association) workshop to introduce his PhD findings, the psychiatrists were completely reluctant to even take into consideration that the framework of psychiatric practice had already been problematic before the Nazis took over. In the end he was the only contributor whose workshop topic was not admitted into the congress brochure. It became obvious to me that the DGPPN is not interested in "accounting for the past" at all. Their "Nazi record task force" is mere image propaganda.

Spazierklavier wrote:Does the NAMI also deal with the history of American psychiatry?

No , they are just pharma funded marketers that are posing as advocates for the mentally ill.



Besides fighting against a patients right to refuse treatment and fighting against the placement of black box warning labels on psychotropic drugs NAMI does stuff like using money from pharma companies to help fight for laws to take children away from parents who refuse to drug them in school or at home and call that "patient advocacy" as well ! see examples below:

Utah HB202
Threatens open communication between schools and families by prohibiting school personnel from making recommendations for a student, including the use of psychotropic medications, and prohibits removal of a child from parental custody based on a parent’s refusal to consent to the administration of psychotropic medications. The bill singles out psychotropic medications as an issue that may not be discussed with families (2007 Session - Passed). (See the Utah HB202 Letter to the Governor and the HB202 Op-Ed in the State Advocacy Toolkit).

Utah HB299
Threatens open communication between schools and families about mental health related concerns by prohibiting school personnel from making certain medical recommendations for a minor, including the use pf psychotropic medications, and prohibits consideration of a petition for removal of a minor, and removal of a minor from parental custody based on a parent’s refusal to consent to the administration of psychotropic medications. School professionals should not recommend any medications for students, but this bill singles out psychotropic medications and appears designed to discourage open communication about legitimate mental health related concerns (Session 2006 - Failed). (See HB299 Op-Ed in the State Advocacy Toolkit).

-- Sun Dec 29, 2013 8:01 pm --

Whats scary is people DO make donations to these NAMI fraudsters , wile that pharma money buys the best web page designers and marketing experts to keep the scam going.

THE YEAR WAS 1979 AND THE place was the state capitol in Sacramento, Calif. Assemblyman Art Torres, chairman of the Health Committee, introduced a bill to the legislature to repeal the state’s sterilization law. First passed in the same chambers 70 years earlier and modified several times over the decades, this statute had sanctioned over 20 000 nonconsensual sterilizations on patients in state-run homes and hospitals, or one third of the more than 60 000 such procedures in the United States in the 20th century.

Psychiatry has been doing "NAZI" stuff to for a long time.
http://www.google.com/search?q=psychiatry+forced+sterilizations

-- Sun Dec 29, 2013 8:17 pm --

Today it seems if they think your thoughts are not in order they sterilize your brain with disabling drugs "mental hygiene" and people think this is O.K cause its "medical care" , if it wasn't true it would be almost unbelievable.

Copy_Cat wrote:THE YEAR WAS 1979 AND THE place was the state capitol in Sacramento, Calif. Assemblyman Art Torres, chairman of the Health Committee, introduced a bill to the legislature to repeal the state’s sterilization law. First passed in the same chambers 70 years earlier and modified several times over the decades, this statute had sanctioned over 20 000 nonconsensual sterilizations on patients in state-run homes and hospitals, or one third of the more than 60 000 such procedures in the United States in the 20th century.

Psychiatry has been doing "NAZI" stuff to for a long time.
http://www.google.com/search?q=psychiatry+forced+sterilizations

-- Sun Dec 29, 2013 8:17 pm --

Today it seems if they think your thoughts are not in order they sterilize your brain with disabling drugs "mental hygiene" and people think this is O.K cause its "medical care" , if it wasn't true it would be almost unbelievable.

Wow they were sterilizing patients?!?!?! Big pharma needs to die.

The irony of a significant amount of modern medicine is the fact that it originated from atrocities committed by the Nazi's, and this includes some of modern psychiatry. It is sad that so many people died during the Nazi rampage across most of Europe, but the reality is that many developments were made during those times that would have taken years to accomplish otherwise. The truth is that eventually the stigma will fade, and it will be nothing more than a footnote in history books. Regardless of the history psychiatry may have, the reality is that is has become a legitimate science in the modern world and has most likely helped more lives than were lost in its creation.

boomer411 wrote:The irony of a significant amount of modern medicine is the fact that it originated from atrocities committed by the Nazi's, and this includes some of modern psychiatry. It is sad that so many people died during the Nazi rampage across most of Europe, but the reality is that many developments were made during those times that would have taken years to accomplish otherwise. The truth is that eventually the stigma will fade, and it will be nothing more than a footnote in history books. Regardless of the history psychiatry may have, the reality is that is has become a legitimate science in the modern world and has most likely helped more lives than were lost in its creation.

No, that isn't the reality, least from my perspective. The reality as I see it is that psychiatry is an ideology that has arrogated to itself scientific authority. This constant insistence that psychiatry is a science is perhaps an example of insisting too much, methinks. Most of it is just the rodomontade of people deeply insecure regarding the non-existent scientific foundations of their beliefs, I would surmise, who need the rhetoric of science in order to justify the imposition of their beliefs, and the intolerance of heresy and diversity. Anyway, scientific truth does not advertise itself any more than true compassion or virtue advertise themselves, yet it is one of the constant refrains of the psychiatric faithful that their beliefs are scientific, just like it is one of the constant refrains of those who practice the faith that they are motivated by compassion (truly compassionate people rarely use the word "compassion" as a term of self-congratulation, they allow their actions to speak for them, though compassion no doubt does play some part in psychiatry).

For one, there is nothing scientific about the process of diagnosis; it is based on authority and not evidence.There are no biological markers adduced as proof of the biological foundation of "mental illness" (although all this would do is prove that the patient has a biological illness anyway), there are no CT scans done for evidence of structural abnormalities or PET scans for metabolic abnormalities, or any other test used to verify or decide a diagnosis. True, some people use MRI scans and SPECT scans, but without evidence of gross pathology, the whole process quickly degenerates into a quasi-phrenological logic, localizing the patient's experience to specific parts of the brain like phrenologists used to localize traits to bumps on the cranium.

Without being anchored in a soild scientifc foundation, the enitre process is arbitrary. Diseases are voted into the DSM by referenda, resting entirely on personal opinion and group consensus, which is contrary to scientific tradition. Some people counter that it is obvious that so and so is ill, but history is replete with examples of assumptions that were held to be obvious that turned out to be untrue.

Psychiatric diagnoses are more like pontifical or oracular pronouncements, accepted purely on faith and not evidence.

As a result of this, reliability is a huge problem, although descriptive diagnosis is supposed to have solved this, but describing behaviours as pathological does nothing to establish the validity of the constructs.