I happen to know all about the pivotal role of psychiatrists in T4 and in devising concentration and extermination camps. But to compare peer specialists with Kapos seems like taking it to another level. The ethical quandaries faced by peer workers are of a different order than the outright collaboration practiced by Kapos.
As the son of Shoah survivors I do not welcome this analogy. The comparison between institutional psychiatry and concentration camps is facile, polemic and inaccurate. While coercion, exclusion, overmedication and iatrogenic morbidity are rampant in mental health care, the systematic mass murder of innocent people remains in a category of its own.
I happen to know all about the pivotal role of psychiatrists in T4 and in devising concentration and extermination camps. But to compare peer specialists with Kapos seems like taking it to another level. The ethical quandaries faced by peer workers are of a different order than the outright collaboration practiced by Kapos.
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As the son of Shoah survivors I do not welcome this analogy. The comparison between institutional psychiatry and concentration camps is facile, polemic and inaccurate. While coercion, exclusion, overmedication and iatrogenic morbidity are rampant in mental health care, the systematic mass murder of innocent people remains in a category of its own.
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