Strous, Rael

BMC Psychiatry

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BMC Psychiatry
Open AccessOral presentation
Historical injustice in psychiatry with examples from Nazi Germany 
and others: ethical lessons for the modern professional
Rael Strous
Address: Beer Yaakov Mental Health Center, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, PO Box 1, Israel, 70350 Beer Yaakov, Israel
For the first time in history, psychiatrists during the Nazi
era sought to systematically exterminate their patients.
However, little has been published from this dark period
analyzing what may be learned for clinical and research
psychiatry. At each stage in the murderous process lay a
series of unethical and heinous practices with many psy-
chiatrists demonstrating a profound commitment to the
atrocities playing central, pivotal roles critical to the suc-
cess of Nazi policy. Several misconceptions led to this
misconduct including allowing philosophical constructs
to define clinical practice, focusing exclusively on prevent-
ative medicine, allowing political pressures to influence
practice, blurring roles of clinicians and researchers, and
falsely believing that good science and good ethics always
co-exist. Psychiatry during this period provides a most
pervasive example of how science may be perverted by
external politics. While the experience of psychiatry prac-
tice in Germany during the Nazi era is an extreme exam-
ple, it is but one of a series of injustices that a small but
prominent number of psychiatrists have perpetrated in
history. It thus becomes crucial to include the Nazi era
psychiatry experience as well as others, all be them of
lesser scale and magnitude, in ethics training as an exam-
ple of proper practice gone awry.
from WPA Thematic Conference. Coercive Treatment in Psychiatry: A Comprehensive Review
Dresden, Germany. 6–8 June 2007
Published: 19 December 2007
BMC Psychiatry 2007, 7(Suppl 1):S93 doi:10.1186/1471-244X-7-S1-S93
<supplement> <title> <p>World Psychiatric Association (WPA) Thematic Conference. Coercive Treatment in Psychiatry: A Comprehensive Review</p> </title> <editor>Thomas W Kallert, John Monahan, Juan E Mezzich</editor> <note>Meeting abstracts – A single PDF containing all abstracts in this Supplement is available <a href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-244X-7-S1-full.pdf">here</a>.</note> <url>http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-224X-7-S1-info.pdf</url> </supplement>
This abstract is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/7/S1/S93
© 2007 Strous; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 


Historical injustice in psychiatry with examples from Nazi Germany and others: ethical lessons for the modern professional

Rael Strous

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Historical injustice in psychiatry with examples from Nazi Germany and others: ethical lessons for the modern professional

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