Tag: psychiatry and eugenics

On the Mad in America podcast this week, we hear from the co-authors of a paper published in the journal Ethical Human Psychology and...

The worst thing about psychiatry is how it convinces your family to do things that they think are correct, which ultimately gets them to participate in harming you.

Most are oblivious to the fact that psychiatric eugenics initiatives continued to exist—and beyond that, to flourish—long after the end of what is normally thought of as “the eugenics era” (roughly, late nineteen century to 1945). Sadly, we are not learning from history what we direly need to learn.

Political, educational, and mental health fields are joining forces in ever more powerful authoritarian rule. The DSM, proclaimed to be a scientific guidebook, is little more than a political instrument used to control undesirable behaviors and experiences. Who will fight for our rights when everybody is tranquilized into conformity?

From NewBostonPost: In light of the recent commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it is important to acknowledge the role that eugenics, a field developed by psychiatrists...

From Atlas Obscura: In the 1930s, hundreds of people with mental disabilities committed to the now abandoned DeJarnette Sanitarium were forcibly sterilized and experimented on by the hospital's eugenicist namesake.

In psychiatry, there has always been a swing between the two poles of nature and nurture. Unfortunately, psychiatry is firmly back in the nature camp. Lip service is paid to the emotional environment and trauma. But that is as far as it goes. The accepted (and dangerous) belief is that psychiatry deals with brain diseases – inherited brain diseases. We are back to absolute genetic determinism.