Global Initiative on Psychiatry

Global Initiative on Psychiatry (GIP) is an international foundation for mental health reform which took part in the campaign against the political abuse of psychiatry in the USSR.^[1] The organization is of NGO type.^[2]

Global Initiative on Psychiatry

Formation	20 October 1980; 44 years ago (1980-10-20)
Founder	Gérard Bles
Type	Non-profit NGO
Headquarters	Lorentzweg 45 B 1221 EE, Hilversum, Netherlands
Fields	psychiatry
1986–present Chief Executive	Robert van Voren, Ph.D.
Subsidiaries	Working Group on the Internment of Dissenters in Mental Hospitals; Committee of French Psychiatrists Against the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes; German Association Against the Political Abuse of Psychiatry; International Podrabinek Fund; Swiss Association Against Psychiatric Abuse for Political Purposes
Website	www.gip-global.org

Headquartered in Hilversum, GIP has regional centers in Tbilisi, Sofia, and Vilnius, and a country office in Dushanbe.^[3]

GIP is a main contributor to improving psychiatric care in countries of the former Soviet Union as well as Central and Eastern Europe.^[4] It has expanded its focus and as of 2010 is including projects in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean.^[3]

GIP also focuses on the political abuse of psychiatry throughout the world^[5] and human rights monitoring.^[6]

History

20 December 1980 saw the formation in Paris of the International Association on the Political Use of Psychiatry (IAPUP) whose first secretary was Dr Gérard Bles of France.^[7] Since the Congress in Honolulu in 1978, he has inspired the movement against the use of psychiatry for political ends.^[8] The organization campaigned against the political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union^[9] by leading efforts within national and international psychiatric organizations to eradicate this systematic abuse.^[10] The IAPUP had no connection with any political group nor with antipsychiatry.^[11] The organization brought together and coordinated independent groups dedicated to the struggle against political abuse of psychiatry and composed of psychiatrists and human rights activists from Canada, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and West Germany.^[11] During its first two decades IAPUP, investigated the accusations of oppressive exploitation in a number of countries such as Argentina, Bulgaria, Chile, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, Eastern Germany, Hungary, Romania, South Africa, the Netherlands, and Yugoslavia.^{[citation needed]} The publication of the IAPUP was Information Bulletin.^[12] The IAPUP included the following participating committees:^[12]

1. Working Group on the Internment of Dissenters in Mental Hospitals;
2. Committee of French Psychiatrists Against the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes;
3. German Association Against the Political Abuse of Psychiatry;
4. International Podrabinek Fund;
5. Swiss Association Against Psychiatric Abuse for Political Purposes.

In 1986, Robert van Voren became General Secretary of the IAPUP.^[13] After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the financing of the IAPUP headed by Robert van Voren ceased until it adopted program of broad compromises and, correspondingly, the opposite name of The International Association for the Abolition and Prevention of Political Psychiatry, or Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry.^[14] In 2005, the organization was renamed Global Initiative on Psychiatry (GIP).^[15] From 1995 to 2000, Chair of the Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry was James Birley.^[16]

Leadership

The board is composed of professionals from some twenty countries.^[17] Chief Executive of the Global Initiative on Psychiatry is Robert van Voren,^[18] a Honorary Fellow of the British Royal College of Psychiatrists and Honorary Member of the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association.^[19] In 2005, he was knighted by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands for his work as a human rights activist.^[19] He is a professor of Soviet and post-Soviet Studies in the Ilia State University in Tbilisi (Georgia) and in the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas (Lithuania).^[20]

Approach

The Global Initiative on Psychiatry uses a local approach to helping the mentally ill in underprivileged countries around the world. In Robert van Voren's words, their idea is that "mental health services should be locally empowered, locally adapted, community based, user oriented, and focused on keeping people with mental illness in society, instead of taking them out."^[21] The organization has been involved in deinstitutionalizing mental health services for children in post-Communist countries.^[22] The GIP dedicates itself to promoting the necessary reforms to implement "humane, ethical, and effective mental health care throughout the world."^[23] Reports by the Global Initiative on Psychiatry are often comprehensive and consider the treatment options.^[24] The organization has campaigned with substantial success against poor mental health practices abroad, especially in China and the former communist states.^[25] Robert van Voren's contribution to reform of forensic psychiatry in states of the former Soviet Union is widely recognized.^[26]

References

1. Donskis 2009, p. 314; Leygraf 2010; Narayan 2013
2. Pallot, Piacentini & Moran 2012, p. 234.
3. GIP 2015.
4. GIP 2015; Voren 2006
5. Tobin 2013; Voren 2010b
6. Voren 2009, p. xii.
7. Bloch & Reddaway 1985, p. 273.
8. Besse 2006.
9. Birley 2000.
10. Mossialos, Murthy & McDaid 2003.
11. Matas 1989.
12. Wiseberg & Sirett 1982, p. 119.
13. Voren 2010a, p. 111.
14. Savenko 2009.
15. Tobin 2013; Voren 2010b
16. Birley 2004.
17. Adler, Mueller & Ayat 1993.
18. Leygraf 2010; Targum, Chaban & Mykhnyak 2013
19. Donskis 2009, p. 314.
20. Voren 2013; Clark 2014
21. Levin 2013.
22. McLeigh & Sianko 2011.
23. Banerjee 2012.
24. Buckingham, Schrage & Cournos 2013.
25. Richmond 2013.
26. Gordon 2006.

Sources

• Adler, Nanci; Mueller, Gerard; Ayat, Mohammed. Psychiatry under tyranny: a report on the political abuse of Romanian psychiatry during the Ceausescu years. Current Psychology. March 1993;12(1):3–17. doi:10.1007/BF02737088. PMID 11652327.
• Banerjee, Anwesha. Cross-cultural variance of schizophrenia in symptoms, diagnosis and treatment. The Georgetown Undergraduate Journal of Health Sciences. July 2012 [archived 11 August 2015];6(2):18–24.
• Besse, Antoine. La psychiatrie française et sa représentation internationale [French psychiatry and its international image]. In: Bokobza, Hervé (ed.). La psychiatrie en péril. En dépit des Etats généraux [Psychiatry in peril. Despite its general condition]. ERES; 2006. French. ISBN 9782749206738. p. 187–191.
• Birley, Jim. Political abuse of psychiatry. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. January 2000;101(399):13–15. doi:10.1111/j.0902-4441.2000.007s020[dash3.x]. PMID 10794019.
• Birley, Jim. Political abuse of psychiatry. Psychiatry. 1 March 2004;3(3):22–25. doi:10.1383/psyt.3.3.22.30675.
• Bloch, Sidney; Reddaway, Peter. Soviet psychiatric abuse: the shadow over world psychiatry. Westview Press; 1985. ISBN 0-8133-0209-9. p. 273.
• Buckingham, Elizabeth; Schrage, Ezra; Cournos, Francine. Why the treatment of mental disorders is an important component of HIV prevention among people who inject drugs. Advances in Preventive Medicine. 17 January 2013. doi:10.1155/2013/690386. PMID 23401785.
• Clark, Fiona. Is psychiatry being used for political repression in Russia?. The Lancet. 11 January 2014;383(9912):114–115. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(13)62706-3. PMID 24422214.
• Donskis, Leonidas. A Litmus test case of modernity: examining modern sensibilities and the public domain in the Baltic States at the turn of the century. Peter Lang; 2009. ISBN 3-0343-0335-1. p. 314.
• Gordon, Harvey. Reform of forensic psychiatry in the former Soviet Union. Psychiatric Bulletin. 31 July 2006;30(8):313. doi:10.1192/pb.30.8.313.
• Levin, Aaron. Global Initiative on Psychiatry. Psychiatric News. 1 February 2013 [Retrieved 2 March 2013];48(3):12. doi:10.1176/appi.pn.2013.2a17.
• Leygraf, Vrolg. Ist die nachträgliche Sicherungsverwahrung am Ende? [Is compulsory hospitalization unprofitable in the end?]. Der Nervenarzt [The Neurologist]. 27 June 2010;81(7):867–872. German. doi:10.1007/s00115-010-3046-0.
• Matas, Manuel. The ethics of involuntary hospitalization and treatment of mentally ill persons. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. December 1989;34(9):945–947. PMID 2611761.
• McLeigh, Jill; Sianko, Natallia. What should be done to promote mental health around the world?. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. January 2011;81(1):83–89. doi:10.1111/j.1939-0025.2010.01074.x. PMID 21219278.
• Mossialos, Elias; Murthy, Anant; McDaid, David. European Union enlargement: will mental health be forgotten again?. European Journal of Public Health. March 2003 [archived 2016-03-06];13(1):2–3. doi:10.1093/eurpub/13.1.2. PMID 12678306.
• Narayan, Choudhary. Political abuse of psychiatry. Indian Journal of Psychiatry. January 2013;55(1):96. doi:10.4103/0019-5545.105529. PMID 23436943.
• Pallot, Judith; Piacentini, Laura; Moran, Dominique. Gender, geography, and punishment: the experience of women in carceral Russia. OUP Oxford; 2012. ISBN 0199658617. p. 234.
• Richmond, Caroline. Jim Birley obituary. Leading social psychiatrist who transformed the understanding of schizophrenia. The Guardian. 24 October 2013.
• Savenko, Yuri [Юрий Савенко]. 20-летие НПА России [20th anniversary of the IPA of Russia]. Nezavisimiy Psikhiatricheskiy Zhurnal The Independent Psychiatric Journal. 2009 [Retrieved 20 July 2011];(1):5–18. Russian.
• Targum, Steven; Chaban, Oleh; Mykhnyak, Serhiy. Psychiatry in the Ukraine. Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience. April 2013;10(4):41–46. PMID 23696959.
• Tobin, John. Editorial: political abuse of psychiatry in authoritarian systems. Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine. June 2013;30(2):97–102. doi:10.1017/ipm.2013.23.
• Voren, Robert van. Reforming forensic psychiatry and prison mental health in the former Soviet Union. Psychiatric Bulletin. 31 March 2006;30(4):124–126. doi:10.1192/pb.30.4.124.
• Voren, Robert van. On dissidents and madness: from the Soviet Union of Leonid Brezhnev to the "Soviet Union" of Vladimir Putin. Amsterdam—New York: Rodopi; 2009. ISBN 978-90-420-2585-1. p. xii.
• Voren, Robert van. Cold war in psychiatry: human factors, secret actors. Amsterdam—New York: Rodopi; 2010a. ISBN 90-420-3048-8. p. 111.
• Voren, Robert van. Political abuse of psychiatry—an historical overview. Schizophrenia Bulletin. 2010b [archived 2011-07-26];36(1):33–35. doi:10.1093/schbul/sbp119. PMID 19892821. PMC 2800147.
• Voren, Robert van. Психиатрия как средство репрессий в советских и постсоветских странах [Psychiatry as a tool of coercion in post-Soviet countries]. Вестник Ассоциации психиатров Украины [The Herald of the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association]. 2013;(5). Russian.
• Wiseberg, Laurie; Sirett, Hazel. Human rights directory, Western Europe: a directory of organizations in Western Europe concerned with issues of human rights and social justice. Human Rights Internet; 1982. ISBN 0939338017. p. 119.
• Global Initiative on Psychiatry. What GIP does [Retrieved 31 July 2015].

Further reading

• Voren, Robert van. Fifty years of political abuse of psychiatry – no end in sight. Ethics, Medicine and Public Health. January–March 2015;1(1):44–51. doi:10.1016/j.jemep.2014.12.001.
• Voren, Robert van. Ending political abuse of psychiatry: where we are at and what needs to be done. Psychiatric Bulletin. April 2015;40(1):30–33. doi:10.1192/pb.bp.114.049494. PMID 26958357.