Similarities and differences in the management of psychiatric disorders by the colonial empires: an historical overview.

Colonial psychiatry represented the first, despite distorted, attempt to interpret psychiatric symptoms in non-Western cultures. This psychiatry, therefore, laid the roots for the subsequent development of ethnopsychiatry, but it also represented the first example of the political use of this discipline. Purpose of the present article is to provide a critical review about the management of psychiatric disorders in the different colonial empires. We critically summarized relevant literature about theory and practice of colonial psychiatry in the different European empires. All the colonial empires were characterized by few resources destined to mental health both for the colonizers, but especially for the local populations. The British used reports from psychiatric hospitals to maintain political control over the colonies. French colonial psychiatry focused more on cultural assimilation, while the Dutch one was based on theories of racial inferiority of local populations. In Italy, colonial psychiatry focused more on the differences between the north and south of the country than on non-European territories. Although with differences between the various empires, colonial psychiatry provided means and support for the political and social control of the occupied territories.

The political use of psychiatry: A comparison between totalitarian regimes.

BACKGROUND: After the end of Second World War, the recent experience of the Nazi horrors stimulated a debate about the political use of psychiatry. Over the years, the focus shifted on major dictatorships of the time and especially on Soviet Union. AIMS: This article aims to provide a critical review of the ways in which psychiatry was used by totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. METHODS: We summarized relevant literature about political use of psychiatry in totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, with particular focus on Fascism, Nazism, Argentina dictatorship, Soviet Union and China. RESULTS: One of the features that are common to most of the dictatorships is that the use of psychiatry has become more prominent when the regimes have had the need to make more acceptable the imprisonment of enemies in the eyes of the world. This for example happened in the Nazi regime when sterilization and killing of psychiatric patients was explained as a kind of euthanasia, or in the Soviet Union after the formal closure of the corrective labor camps and the slow resumption of relations with the capitalistic world, or in China to justify persecution of religious minorities and preserve economic relations with Western countries. CONCLUSION: Psychiatry has been variously used by totalitarian regimes as a means of political persecution and especially when it was necessary to make acceptable to public opinion the imprisonment of political opponents.