Insight Matters
Winter, 2002

Candidate for OPA Secretary: Ralph Walton, M.D.

Position statement
In 1986 I found myself enraged over what I felt were egregious abuses of our profession, not in the United States, but in the then Soviet Union. The Russians used the psychiatric system, and in particular the so-called "special" psychiatric hospitals, for the control of political dissidents. As Commission of Mental Health in Chautauqua County, N.Y. and as a delegate to the Chautaugua Conference on U.S.-Soviet Relations, held in Riga, Moscow and Leningrad I thought I might be in a position to have some impact on this outrageous abuse of psychiatry.

The world mental health community had responded to the Soviets' use of the spurious diagnosis of
"sluggish schizophrenia" to incarcerate political dissidents by expelling the USSR's All Union Society of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists from the World Psychiatric Association in 1983. This "excommunications" proved totally ineffective in modifying the behavior of Soviet mental health professionals. My position, as expressed to the Russian ambassador in Washington, and at the Chautauqua Conference, was that if the medical discipline with, theoretically, expertise in communication, remained rigidly divided into Soviet and American "camps," with little or no mutual understanding or dialogue, this did not bode well for the rest of society, particularly in the nuclear era. As one small step in re-establishing dialogue, I proposed a mental health exchange program, between the Chautauqua County Department of Mental Health, and an analogous mental health clinic system in the Soviet Union. The Soviets were more than eager for such an exchange, perhaps as a means of re-establishing respect and credibility, if only with a small county in upstate N.Y. Before finalizing the plans, however, I made it clear to the Russian ambassador that I could not in good conscience proceed with this exchange as long as the dissident psychiatrist Dr. Anatoly Koryagin remained impros9oned and near death in a Perm labor camp. I was assured that if the exchange materialized Dr. Koryagin would be released. The following summer a team of physicians and therapists from Moscow would be released. The following summer a team of physicians and therapists from Moscow visited the Chautauqua County Department of Mental Health. Shortly thereafter Dr. Koryagin emigrated to the West.

In 2002 I find myself even more enraged than I was in 1986, this time by abuses of psychiatry from without rather than within, and here at home rather than in Russia. The abuses of psychiatry produced by the current managed care environment, although not as immediately obvious or flagrant as the situation which prevailed in the U.S.S.R, are nevertheless, in my opinion, just as malignant and dangerous to our patients and our profession. It is unnecessary for me to detail the abuses - anyone in practice is only too painfully aware of the issues. I pledge that if I am fortunate enough to achieve the honor of being an officer in the OPA, I will be energetic, diligent and resourceful in pursuing solutions.

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