This text is part of the special Acfas Congress notebook
Reflecting on the relationship between psychiatry, violence and death through an interdisciplinary approach is the objective set by two researchers, also nurses who have worked in the field of psychiatry, who will present the conference Why it is imperative to abolish the psychiatric system,on the occasion of 91e Acfas Congress.
“I think one of the problems is that there are often historians who do research on history on the one hand and, on the other hand, researchers who do research on psychiatry in hospitals. Then there are patients who are never heard,” explains Thomas Foth, associate professor at the School of Nursing at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa. According to him, the voice of patients is essential to understanding psychiatry as well as its role in the dynamics abounding in contemporary societies.
The death of Jordan Neely was also the starting point for the reflections of Mr. Foth and his colleague Jean-Laurent Domingue, assistant professor at the School of Nursing at the University of Ottawa, surrounding the psychiatric system . 1er May 2023, Neely, an African-American man experiencing homelessness and suffering from mental illness, died on the New York subway after being strangled by one of the passengers, a former marine in his twenties. “We realized that what happens in psychiatry or around psychiatry often ends either in the death of patients, or in violence against people, when we are supposed to help or improve their health” , details Mr. Foth.
But what exactly is the “psychiatric system”? “The way in which psychiatry observes and classifies human behavior has been transposed from this environment to other institutions, such as schools, public health, and police services. This is what we wanted to explore in this conference,” explains Jean-Laurent Domingue.
Retracing the story
“Our introduction to the subject was the police services which are requesting more training in psychiatric intervention for their officers. We see this as very problematic since psychiatry is transposed into another field where it can wreak even more havoc,” adds Mr. Domingue.
For the two researchers, it is not a question of reforming psychiatry, since that would be an impossible task. “We cannot reform it [la psychiatrie], as we cannot reform the police. It won’t change anything. We think that these systems are based on violence, so they cannot function without it,” underlines Thomas Foth.
And to understand where this violence comes from, the researcher explains that it is important to retrace its history. “It was from the beginning. […] It has always been linked with the idea of risk and dangerousness of people who we cannot control and who we must lock up for their own good, but above all for the good of society,” explains the researcher. “Coming from Germany, the rationality of this psychiatry ended in Nazism, with the death of around 300,000 people in psychiatric hospitals,” he recalls.
Taking up the case of Jordan Neely, who led to the idea of the conference, Jean-Laurent Domingue maintains that this “way of thinking”, namely “identifying, classifying, excluding and protecting society”, remains today — although there are not as many psychiatric deaths in Canada and the United States as during Nazi Germany. “Today, we use humanist arguments to justify these actions. With Neely’s case, this situation occurred a few months after the mayor established a public policy to lock up homeless people with mental health problems against their will in hospitals, supposedly for their own good. -he.
Failing to find solutions regarding the psychiatric system, the two experts hope that their conference will at least open the way to discussion. “Maybe it’s such a big project that we can’t think of solutions. But maybe by talking with everyone, we can come to an idea that will allow us to all live together,” believes Thomas Foth.
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