Punitive Psychiatry

Aggressors may use the state psychiatric care system for political purposes to persecute, indefinitely isolate, and torture dissenters. Those who disagree with the regime (dissidents, human rights defenders, civic activists) have false diagnoses fabricated against them (for example, the nonexistent "sluggish schizophrenia"), after which they are forcibly confined to closed institutions. This technique allows the colonizer or a totalitarian system to neutralize resistance without formal judicial proceedings, subjecting victims to destructive medication regimes and stigmatizing opposition activity as a manifestation of insanity.

ID: T0135
Sub-techniques:  No sub-techniques
People: Ukrainians
Contributors: decolonial.ist project
Version: 1.1
Created: 27 April 2026
Last Modified: 9 August 2026

Procedures Carried Out


January 1972
C0089 The "General Pogrom" of Human Rights Defenders and Punitive Psychiatry (1972–1985)
G0010 USSR
S0022 Punitive Medicine and Psychiatry

Use of state healthcare institutions for the politically motivated diagnosing of dissenters (the diagnosis of "sluggish schizophrenia") and their indefinite confinement in psychiatric hospitals[1].

References