worst psychological torture
Rape is a form torture. Print. While the term "white torture" can mean any psychological torture in general, the meaning here is more literal. Help ensure AlterNet remains independent long into the future. Boarding schools or “residential schools” were established by the United States and Canadian governments in the 19th century and functioned up until 1980 for the purpose of destroying indigenous culture (see Roland Chrisjohn’s Circle Game and Ward Churchill’s Kill the Indian, Save the Man). … then let us make a small request. Then join the hundreds of readers who have supported AlterNet this year. While coercive and oppressive schooling is not the only pain for young people, it is a major fuel for inattention, passive-aggressive anger, substance abuse, anxiety, and depression, all of which are routinely labeled by mental health professionals as “symptoms” of mental disorders that result in “treatments” (increasingly consisting of medication). Many people diagnosed with anxiety, depression, substance abuse disorders, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder are essentially anti-authoritarians who fear that their contempt for illegitimate authorities will make it difficult for them to survive. Psychological Torture: Worst Scars Are in the Mind. Abstract: Mental Torture is an especially grave violation of human rights because, in its various forms, its ultimate objective is to annul the very identity and personality of the victim. This data will be updated every 24 hours. While the following list of political abuses of U.S. psychiatry and psychology begins with the infamous Project MKUltra and recent American Psychological Association torture scandal, this should not be taken to imply that these more sensational abuses are the most important ones. And we’re proud to say that we’ve been bringing you the real, unfiltered news for 20 years—longer than any other progressive news site on the Internet. ADAMHA director Frederick Goodwin compared the “high-impact inner city” to a jungle and its youth to rhesus monkeys who only want to kill one another, have sex and reproduce. Or showing you pictures, or even suspending you over a large cage full of spiders. Sleep deprivation is a debilitating form of psychological torture because it attacks the deep biological functions. It’s through the generosity of our supporters that we’re able to share with you all the underreported news you need to know. Even among those employed in careers that they have desired, bureaucratic oppression often makes their jobs dissatisfying. In 1851, Louisiana physician Samuel A. Cartwright attempted to psychopathologize slaves attempting to flee captivity with the mental illness he called drapetomania, for which he devised brutal behavioral modification “treatments.”. However, current American mental health professionals, by way of behavioral manipulation and psychiatric drugs, make such resistance more difficult. The degree of American Psychological Association complicity was detailed in a damning independent review (commissioned, under political pressure, by the American Psychological Association) which revealed that ties between the American Psychological Association and the CIA/DOD were deeper than previously recognized, as the associations’ ethics director collaborated with the DOD to align the associations’ ethics policies with the needs of DOD. "newCitedByModal": true Categories of Psychological Torture Debilitation: Isolation: Threats: Degradation: Pharmacological manipulation: food, water, and sleep deprivation; Sensory deprivation: Sensory assault: hoods,goggles, shouting,loud music,bright lights. 3. Medicating Noncompliance and Marginalizing Anti-Authoritarians. In recent times, the most well-known political abuse of psychiatry with regard to stigmatizing and disempowering a particular group is its psychopathologizing of homosexuality. Walken’s icy presence seeps through the screen and sends chills down the viewers spine as he plainly announces himself as the antichrist and throws … Alexander, Abigail Print. Sensory deprivation soon makes a person start to hallucinate and eventually may drive them mad. Opinion from Salon and Jim Hightower? On a scale from 0 to 5. People who are sleep deprived often suffer from troubling hallucinations. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. Dissident psychologist David Walker details American psychologists’ use of pseudoscientific psychometrics (including IQ testing) to attempt to establish the inferiority of indigenous Americans so as to justify eugenic solutions such as sterilization—another form of genocide. @2021 - AlterNet Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. and Guards wear all white, lights are kept on 24 … The fight isn't over. This CIA program of experiments on human subjects, which began in the early 1950s, used drugs (including LSD) and other procedures (including sensory deprivation and electroshock) to weaken and break an individual and force confessions. John Taylor Gatto, former New York City and New York State teacher of the year, stated: “The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders”; and John Holt concluded, “School is a place where children learn to be stupid ....Children come to school curious; within a few years most of that curiosity is dead, or at least silent.” The National Endowments for the Arts reported in 2007 that standard schooling is associated with a decline of reading for pleasure, and Scholastic reported in 2015 that this decline is associated with coercion (choice over reading materials increases pleasure reading). Analysis by The Conversation? Chinese, Simplified Torture often includes methods that entail severe psychological distress and profoundly disrupt the senses and personality. The worst scars are in the mind: psychological torture, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1816383107001300. Join us! The two are often used in conjunction with one another and often overlap in practice, with the fear and pain induced by physical torture often resulting in long-term psychological … American Psychological Association Assistance in Interrogation/Torture. Solitary confinement and prolonged sleep deprivation are just two examples of these psychological torture methods. No Sir!). According to the Navy Times in 2010, one in six U.S. armed service members were taking at least one psychiatric drug, many of these medicated soldiers in combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. Let’s rate it for how physically damaging it is. The political goals of this policy include land theft and enabling a standardized monoculture. Vourvopoulos, Athanasios Even after declassifying homosexuality as a mental illness, much of establishment psychiatry continued to maintain that homosexuality was not as normal as heterosexuality, according to dissident psychiatrist Vivek Datta, who points out that even in the declassification year 1973, “a number of publications discuss diagnostic and treatment aspects of homosexuality, including aversive conditioning, use of electric shocks and even lobotomy.” Datta details how the diagnosis of “sexual orientation disturbance” (later to become “ego-dystonic sexual orientation”)—defined by a discomfort with one’s sexual preference—was only applied by psychiatry to same-sex attraction, and that “it was not until 1987 that homosexuality completely disappeared from the DSM.”, 4. Rebellious children and teenagers, for example, are routinely diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), the symptoms include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules” and “often argues with adults.” ODD is one of several “disruptive behavior disorders,” and a 2012 study reported that disruptive behavior disorders were the most common diagnoses in children medicated with antipsychotic drugs, accounting for 63% of those medicated. Answer Save. Subverting U.S. Soldiers’ Resistance to the Military-Industrial Complex. View all Google Scholar citations Relevance. 2020. Mental health professionals pathologize noncompliance. Solitary confinement and prolonged sleep deprivation are just two examples of these psychological torture methods. 17. Many soldiers in Vietnam, as part of a general non-cooperation, used illegal psychotropic drugs, which alarmed U.S. government officials who were afraid of unleashing illegal-drug using veterans on American streets. The “cumulation over time” factor must thus be considered as part of a system of psychological torture. "isUnsiloEnabled": true, Render date: 2021-03-14T00:17:21.377Z Solitary confinement and prolonged sleep deprivation are just two examples of these psychological torture methods. 2020. Subverting U.S. Soldiers’ Resistance to the Military-Industrial Complex. Nothing was more powerful in ending American involvement in Vietnam than U.S. soldiers’ refusal to cooperate with the U.S. military (see the 2005 documentary Sir! Psychological Torture: Worst Scars Are in the Mind. A June 2013 Gallup poll revealed that 70% of Americans hate their jobs or have “checked out” of them. Says Walker, “It’s been a difficult realization to encounter my own profession’s complicity in this history, but I try to respond by bearing witness.”, 5. Among U.S. veterans, a 2014 study revealed 1.85 million veterans are using at least one psychiatric drug with 30 percent of them having no psychiatric diagnosis. While the physical injuries produced by torture Haidar, Riwa Petition opposing inhuman curfew, Protection against worst physical & psychological torture, degrading treatment and to assess Human Rights situation in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) 161869 have signed. Currently, 23 percent of women ages 40-59 are taking antidepressant (compared to 11 percent for all American adults). you can imagine suffering? Instead of devoting resources to help veterans heal from trauma, reintegrate into their families, and find meaningful work, the quick and cheap way to get troubled veterans out the clinic door is a psychiatric drug prescription. Close. Some people, especially women think of rae as right sex, or masochism, it is not. and Even psychological methods which do not amount to ill-treatment when considered in isolation, amount to inhuman or degrading treatment or torture, when applied in conjunction with other techniques, cumulatively and/or over a long time. 6. What is the worst psychological torture you can imagine suffering (anything causing even minor physical injury should not be considered)? The former president of the American Psychological Association, Martin Seligman, has consulted with the U.S. Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness positive psychology program. Click here to donate by check. click here to become a subscriber. By Joan Delaney. In 1792, Rush argued that the “color” and “figure” of African Americans were derived from a form of leprosy, and he argued that with proper treatment, they could be cured and become white. Chair Torture. The American Psychiatric Association in 1973—due to the political efforts of gay activists—finally relented and declassified homosexuality as a pathology in its diagnostic bible, the DSM. 10068 Digital Signatures. Torture during interrogation often includes methods that do not physically assault the body or cause actual physical pain and yet entail severe psychological pain and suffering and profoundly disrupt the senses and personality. However, the mainstream media has routinely neglected the ordinary and everyday political use and abuse of U.S. psychiatry and psychology to stigmatize and disempower groups, enable dehumanizing institutions, compel compliance, marginalize dissent, depoliticize, and maintain the status quo. These discarded populations include foster children, the elderly in nursing homes, and inmates in prisons and jails, where antipsychotic drugs are an inexpensive way to subdue and manage. Editor’s note: The Epoch Times … Liarokapis, Fotis Psychiatric political abuses in nations that are U.S. enemies have been routinely denounced by, , especially during the Cold War within the, (where political dissidents were diagnosed with “. By Joan Delaney. The Worst Scars are in the Mind Deconstructing psychological torture . Do you approve of Biden's presidency so far? Why Solitary Confinement Is The Worst Kind Of Psychological Torture. 6. White torture is a type of sensory deprivation in which a prisoner’s cell, clothes, and even food are entirely white. 151801 Physical Signatures. A potentially large army of anti-authoritarian activists are being kept off democracy battlefields by mental health professionals who prevent the development of political consciousness by pathologizing—and thus depoliticizing—normal defiant reactions. Torture is the intentional infliction of severe physical or psychological torment as an expression of cruelty, a means of intimidation, deterrent, revenge or punishment, or as a tool for the extraction of information or confessions.The common concept of torture is that torture causes pain (or a threat of pain) to the body, but it can also cause terrible effects and associated damage to the psyche. Enabling Authoritarian Standard Schooling. Feature Flags: { A 2012 survey among physicians revealed that nine out of 10 doctors would not recommend health care as a profession to their friends and family. Published 5 years ago: April 8, 2016 at 4:00 am-Filed to: mental health.