Psychologists Violate Their Own Ethical Principle to “Do No Harm”

Watchdog Group Says Psychologists Should be Banned from Participating in Abusive Interrogations of Prisoners

The mental health watchdog group Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR) is calling for a ban on psychologists participating in abusive prisoner interrogations as it violates even their own code of ethics: Principle A of the American Psychological Association’s “Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct” states that psychologists should “do no harm.”

On Sunday (8/19/2007), at its annual convention in San Francisco, the American Psychological Association (APA) voted against a measure that would have banned members from partaking in interrogations that violate basic human rights of prisoners, thereby refusing to distance itself from a long and sordid history of psychological and psychiatric techniques used to torture prisoners as well as political dissidents. Instead, the APA approved a resolution to restrict members only from taking part in a list of specific torture methods such as religious and sexual humiliation, simulated drowning, sleep deprivation and the use of dogs to frighten detainees.  

CCHR says the APA’s actions last weekend are an ineffectual attempt to divert public backlash against psychologists’ involvement in torture techniques, without acting to eradicate the problem altogether.  Bernice Lott, member of the APA council of representatives admitted, “Without the amendment that would call on our colleagues to not participate in these inhumane situations, it’s all just words.”  

Psychologists and psychiatrists have historically played a central role in torture methods used on prisoners, and such recent abuses in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and other U.S. military detention centers have been publicly condemned by many in the U.S. as well as abroad. Psychologists’ participation in these abuses have drawn so much attention that the APA convention was greeted by protestors standing on boxes with black hoods and wires trailing from their arms, symbolizing the torture of detainees.  

Politically motivated torture using psychiatric and psychological techniques occurs throughout the world; in China, more than 600 members of the religious group Falun Gong have been involuntarily detained in psychiatric facilities, where they are heavily drugged and subjected to other abuses to force them to renounce their beliefs. Reports of psychiatric abuse and involuntary commitment of political dissidents continue to flood in from other countries, including Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Russia.  

For example, Elena Urlaeva, a vocal critic of the Uzbekistan government, was forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital in August 2005, for the third time, where she was forced to endure a series of injections and psychotropic drugs. In response to this incident, U.S. deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli stated, “The United States deplores the forcible psychiatric treatment of human rights activist Elena Urlayeva by the Government of Uzbekistan…Treating political dissidents as victims of psychosis has long been a tactic used by repressive regimes.”  

An equally horrible fate befell political dissidents who were abused in psychiatric “gulags” during the Soviet era. Russian historian, Professor Anatoli Prokopenko, commissioned in 1996 by former President Boris Yeltsin to investigate this abuse said, “Soviet leaders of psychiatry have never publicly declared their responsibility in damaging the mental health of people, nor for the inhumane conditions in their hospitals. Political repression using psychiatric means still occurs in Russia today.”  

Underpinning these past and continuing atrocities are psychologists’ and psychiatrists’ arbitrary and unscientific opinion about what constitutes “mental illness” and the treatment regime to be implemented—both easily manipulated to serve political purposes.  Russian psychiatrists, for example, would diagnose political dissidents with, “sluggish schizophrenia,” which had “symptoms” including a severe case of “inflexibility of convictions.” CCHR says mental health practitioners should be banned from any participation in interrogations and should face license revocations and/or criminal prosecutions for participation in any practices that result in harm, abuse and/or torture.  

Visit www.psychassault.org for more information.