Psychiatrists and psychologists have been used by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to facilitate mind control and torture in Project MKUltra and in the American Psychological Association bolstered CIA torture program. Psychiatric political abuses in nations that are U.S. enemies have been routinely denounced by U.S. establishment psychiatry and the U.S. government, especially during the Cold War within the Soviet Union (where political dissidents were diagnosed with “sluggish schizophrenia” and psychiatrically hospitalized and drugged). However, the abuse of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment to subvert human rights has occurred not only in totalitarian U.S. enemies but in the United States as well.
While the following list of political abuses of U.S. psychiatry and psychology begins with the infamous Project MKUltra and recent American Psychological Association torture scandal, this should not be taken to imply that these more sensational abuses are the most important ones. For gay Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans, the political abuse of psychiatry and psychology is a significant part of their traumatizing American history; and while MKUltra resulted in severe trauma and even death, mental health professionals’ current enabling of dehumanizing American institutions continues to create, quite possibly, even greater damage.