People were sent there for their religious beliefs…psychiatry was used to attempt to suppress peoples spiritual beliefs… It didn’t succeed…
“In the 50’s and 60’s the dissident movement–both political and religious–only increased its ranks. At first the communists (who claim to abide by their Constitution) tried to apply the law and many were sentenced with “Anti-Soviet Agitation and Propaganda”. A church sermon could easily fall into this category even though Article 52 of the same Constitution guarantees “freedom of religion.” Many of these dissidents turned to study law for use in self-defense. Undaunted by such a counter-attack, the Soviets pulled their own trump–of declaring such dissidents “insane”. No longer were there needed the formalities of a courtroom trial. The signature of a psychiatrist was enough to lock someone up in an insane asylum with no recourse to appeal.”
http://www.roca.org/OA/5/5e.htm
Subtly I see the same thing going on in the western societies. Psychiatry and those who are influenced by it and are convinced any manifestation outside normal parameters is a sickness and delusion and must be treated or medicated. They leave no room for even the possibility of spiritual communications and paranormal phenomenon. Like the Soviets who used such an abusive system, they try and convince you if you hear any voices or see any visions at all, you are delusional and need treatment.
The only thing I don’t see is people being imprisoned for their beliefs just for having their beliefs. But I do see persecution verbally in both the spoken and written word.
" In the Soviet Union, psychiatric hospitals were often used by the authorities as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally; as such they were considered a form of torture. The official explanation was that no sane person would be against socialism."
We could change that a bit and say in our society the psychiatric mind set would tell us no sane person would be against psychiatric diagnoses, the DSM book, and what the psychiatrist says is the truth.
No sane person would argue with the psychiatrist…
But in the Soviet Union psychiatrists were used to suppress religious & spiritual belief systems…
“The official Soviet psychiatric science came up with the definition of sluggish schizophrenia, a special form of the illness that supposedly affects only the person’s social behavior, with no trace on other traits: “most frequently, ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure,” according to the Moscow Serbsky Institute professors”
This should be cause for concern…