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Response to Dr Spoto

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2019

Wendy Burn*
Affiliation:
President, Royal College of Psychiatrists
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Abstract

Type
Correspondence
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2019

Dr Giuseppe Spoto asks why the College has not made a statement about the treatment of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Iran and remembers that in the past it has spoken out against abuse of psychiatry in the former Soviet Union in the 1970s.

We remain active in responding to cases where we believe there has been abuse of human rights. We have to be very cautious about making public statements on these issues; we never act until we have taken advice from those working closely with the family and supporters of the individual concerned and from agencies such as Amnesty International. It would be easy to unwittingly make the situation worse for the people involved.

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