Document

Policy: The World Medical Association Resolution On The Abuse Of Psychiatry

Adopted by the WMA General Assembly, Washington 2002

Initiated: May 2001 20.5/2001

The World Medical Association (WMA) notes with concern evidence from a number of countries that political dissidents and social activists have been detained in psychiatric institutions, and subjected to unnecessary psychiatric treatment as a punishment.
The WMA:
1. declares that such detention and treatment is abusive and unacceptable;
2. calls on physicians and psychiatrists to resist involvement in these abusive practices;
3. calls on member National Member Associations (NMAs) to support their physician members who resist involvement in these abuses, and
4. calls on governments to stop abusing medicine and psychiatry in this manner, and on non-governmental organizations and the World Health Organization to support this initiative.