Canadian psychiatrists have been cited for torturing patients with drugs and chains

There have been growing concerns of how consistently abusive psychiatrists are with the Citizens Commission on Human Rights helping to increase awareness of this tragic problem. Recently a lawsuit in Canada was raised against psychiatrists for torturing patients.

CCHR International has published a report by human rights activist journalist Kelly O’Meara dealing with a lawsuit being brought against Canadian psychiatrists for torturing patients with drugs and chains. A judge has said the methods used by these psychiatrists amounted to “torture and degradation of human dignity.”

Previous residents of a psychiatric facility in Ontario, Canada have been cleared by this Canadian judge to move ahead with a class action civil suit against two psychiatrists who subjected patients to torturous treatment programs for years. Presiding Justice Paul Perell has alleged the two psychiatrists, Dr. Elliott Thompson Barker and Dr. Gary Maier, of the Oak Ridge division of the Penetang Psychiatric Hospital in Penetanguishene, Ontario, tortured patients. It is seen as an “inexcusable breach of fiduciary duty” for a doctor to torture a patient.

There are 31 plaintiffs in this lawsuit. Three abusive programs which were developed by Dr. Barker and which were implemented by Dr. Barker and Dr. Maier have been noted. The nature of the abuses have been so horrible it is shocking the responsible psychiatrists are not being hit with criminal charges.

In what has been called Defense Disruptive Therapy patients were forced to take hallucinogenic and delirium-producing drugs. These drugs were being used to break down the defense mechanisms of patients in order to force them to deal with their supposed abnormal behavior.

In the Motivation, Attitude, Participation Program patients were forced to complete 14 days of perfect behavior. This included rules dealing with talking or movement which was not authorized. In part of this program patients were forced to sit on a bare floor with their hands cuffed. They were hardly allowed to move in a small space of three square feet. It patients failed to comply they could be forced to take sedative drugs or they could be thrown into solitary confinement.

In the Capsule Program seven people were chained together in a room. They were all stripped naked and kept that way for days at a time. Patients were fed only liquid foods from straws via holes in the wall. The patients were kept under surveillance around the clock and were often forced to take hallucinogenic drugs.

Patients in the United States are also often subjected to abuse and human rights violations at the hands of the psychiatrists. Patient suicides, deaths while restrained, falsified records, and the brutal sexual assaults of patients all occur on a regular basis.

The Times Colonist has reported on the Canadian psychiatric torture case. A court in Ontario has ruled that a provincial mental health facility operated psychiatric therapeutic programs for years which amounted to torture of patients. Justice Perell says the programs amounted to both physical and mental torture.

It has been noted by Justice Perell that the doctors were probably operating programs which were based on accepted medical practices of the day. Nevertheless the judge says in his opinion that does not excuse the activities of the psychiatrists.

Justice Perell sees what has happened as a breach of a doctor’s ethical duty not to physically and mentally torture patients even if the medical profession at the time views such programs as being treatment for the mentally ill. This is a noteworthy consideration by Justice Perell in dealing with the tragically abusive discipline of psychiatry and a horribly flawed medical profession and Justice Departments which often view psychiatric torture as accepted treatment.