The article “Mental Health Professionals in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Room” on the cover of this issue provides an invaluable service. It documents psychologists’ and physicians’ involvement in enhanced interrogation programs.
The impact of professional involvement goes beyond the harm suffered by the person who is waterboarded, slammed into a wall, forced to hold a stress position, or deprived of sleep for over 72 hours. Freyd1 wrote that professional participation perpetrates 3 betrayals. It betrays the trust and human rights of the person subjected to those methods; it betrays professional ethics; and it betrays society’s trust.
US psychologists embraced ethi-cal policies that set them apart from other professionals.2 Steven H. Miles,3 author of Oath Betrayed: America’s Torture Doctors, wrote: “The American Psychological Association was unique among US health professional associations in providing policy cover for abusive interrogations.”4
After 9/11, the American Psychological Association revised its ethics code to reject the Nuremberg ethic.5 The May 16, 2009, issue of the British Medical Journal emphasized this new psychology-physician split on its cover by stating in regard to the contrasting ethical policies: “Interrogating Detainees: Why Psychologists Participate and Doctors Don’t.”
more:
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/1482745?verify=0the article here:
Mental Health Professionals in the “Enhanced” Interrogation Room John Thomas, JD
On Monday, August 24, 2009, in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a “Top Secret,” highly redacted May 7, 2004, report, Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001 – October 2003).1 The report’s opening pages concede that the activity it divulges “diverges sharply from previous Agency policy and rules that govern interrogation.”
The report outlines “standard interrogation techniques” that “do not incorporate significant physical or psychological pressure,” including “isolation, sleep deprivation not to exceed 72 hours,” and “loud music or white noise.” It also outlines enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) that “do incorporate physical or psychological pressure,” including attention grasp (slapping), walling (slamming a detainee against a wall), stress positions, sleep deprivation beyond 72 hours, and simulated drowning through “waterboarding.” The report describes this last technique in detail:
he individual is bound securely to an inclined bench. . . . Water is then applied to the cloth in a controlled manner. . . . This effort produces the perception of “suffocation and incipient panic,” ie, the perception of drowning.
In addition, the report documents the use of “Specific Unauthorized” techniques. These include the use of a “handgun and power drill” and “mock execution.”
The role of health care professionals
Psychologists participated in every stage of the program’s development and implementation.2 First, they assisted in providing its legal justification. The United Nations Convention against Torture and corresponding federal statutes define torture as “an act intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.”3,4 Severe mental pain or suffering is “the prolonged mental harm” caused by the “infliction or the threat of infliction of severe physical pain or suffering.” Psychologists sanctioned all utilized techniques. For example, the report observes that the CIA “informed us that your on-site psychologists, who have extensive experience with the use of waterboard in Navy training, have not encountered any significant long-term mental health consequences from its use.”
more:http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/1481838
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