Campaign Against Psychiatric Abuse was a group that was founded by Soviet dissident Viktor Fainberg^[1] in April 1975 and participated in the struggle against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union from 1975 to 1988.^[2]

The Campaign involved national and international medical bodies^[3] to reveal the monstrous abuse of human rights through the misuse of psychiatry.^[4]

Participants

The English branch was set up on 5 September 1975^[5] as the British section of the Action Committee Against Abuses of Psychiatry for Political Purposes^[6] and composed of psychiatrists, other doctors, and laymen^[7] including David Markham, Max Gammon, William Shawcross, George Theiner, James Thackara, Tom Stoppard, Marina Voikhanskaya, Eric Avebury,^[8] Helen Bamber,^[9] and Vladimir Bukovsky.^[10]

The chair of the organisation was British psychiatrist Henry Dicks.^[11] From the fall of 1976, its director was Viktor Fainberg.^[12] Committees similar to the Campaign Against Psychiatric Abuse were later set up in France, Germany, and Switzerland.^[13]

Activities

Campaigns of the British section of the group included a rally against psychiatric abuse in July 1976 in Trafalgar Square^[7] and led to the release of Vladimir Borisov, Vladimir Bukovsky and Leonid Plyushch.^[2] The group issued correspondence, bulletins, and other documents which are deposited in the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.^[2] The group was so effective that by the early 1980s Soviet psychiatry had pariah status.^[14] Opposition in Britain including the Campaign Against Psychiatric Abuse led the Royal College of Psychiatrists to establish the Special Committee on the Political Abuse of Psychiatry in 1978.^[15] The Campaign Against Psychiatric Abuse actually never said what its fallback position was, this must mean that the Campaign favoured confinement of the innocent in prisons instead of mental hospitals.^[16]