Mental torture effects lasting
Degrading treatment and psychological manipulation cause as much emotional suffering and long-term mental damage as physical torture, researchers reported Monday.
Psychiatric evaluations of 279 victims of torture and other abuses from the Balkan wars of the 1990s showed that both types of ill-treatment led to similarly high rates of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The victims themselves rated the psychological tactics on par with the physical abuses they suffered.
The study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, grew out of questions of how the Bush administration has interpreted international and U.S. law as it relates to interrogation of terrorism suspects.
The administration has sought to narrow the definition of torture to include only the most extreme forms of physical abuse and psychological tactics resulting in severe, long-term harm. It has argued that some measures – banned under international law as cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment – are acceptable.
The government has softened its stance somewhat, but the debate has continued, with human-rights advocates suggesting the U.S. is too lax in defining “severe” mental suffering and in restricting interrogation methods used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The study shows “there is no such thing as ‘torture-lite,’ ” said Dr. Steven Miles, of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics, who was not involved in the research.
In response to questions about the study, government officials said U.S. interrogators follow national and international laws governing treatment of detainees.
“It would not be appropriate for the Department of Justice to speculate about whether a particular hypothetical act might constitute torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” Erik Ablin, a spokesman there, said in a written statement.
In the wake of scandals at U.S. detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, the military rewrote its field manual.
Several interrogation techniques were explicitly banned, including placing hoods over the heads of prisoners, intimidating detainees with military dogs, and withholding food and medical care, said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Defense.
Some of those techniques were among the tactics addressed in the study.
The researchers, led by Dr. Metin Basoglu, a psychiatrist at King’s College in London, interviewed 279 people who suffered various forms of ill-treatment as the former Yugoslavia collapsed in war.
The subjects, from Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Rijeka and Belgrade, endured clear examples of torture – such as rape, beatings and electrical shocks – as well as a litany of indignities and psychological tactics, including forced nudity, forced standing, cold showers and blindfolding.
The subjects were asked to rank each abuse on a scale of zero to four in terms of the distress it caused.
The worst physical tortures averaged between 3.2 and 3.9. Falling in the same range were several other forms of mistreatment, including isolation, sham executions, death threats and being pelted with urine or feces.
“Non-physical stressors during captivity were as distressing and traumatic as stressors involving physical pain,” Basoglu said.
The interviews were conducted an average of eight years after the mistreatment.
More than 55 percent of the subjects still suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, and 17 percent were clinically depressed. It made no difference whether the abuse was a clear case of physical torture or other forms of psychological manipulation.
What mattered most, Basoglu said, was the degree to which the victim felt a loss of control.