No Asylum: State Psychiatric Repression in the Former USSR [Paperback]

No Asylum is a quantitative assessment of the incidence of state repression via the peculiar institution of forced psychiatric hospitalization of evidently healthy Soviet dissidents. The book explains who was targeted and why, as the State used psychiatry to attempt to deflect, defuse, discredit or destroy the multifaceted dissident movement. Although new detentions virtually ceased as the Union fragmented, it is too early to write an epitaph for psychiatric abuse: political use of psychiatry could be revived in Russia.Acknowledgements - Political Hospitalization: Conception, Conceptualization and Conduct - The Database: Characteristics of the Evidence - Four Explanations of the Political Use of Psychiatry - Who are the Dissident Detainees? Observations and Descriptive Statistics -Trends, Periodicity and Spatial Dispersion - The Risk and Severity of Detention and Demographic Variables - Recent Political and Legal Developments - Summary of the Empirical Evidence and a Theoretical Conclusion - Appendices - Bibliography - Index