Past Programs
Human Rights - 2007
Human Rights and psychiatry (Part 2 of 2): Who speaks for the chained and incarcerated?
15/12/2007
Chained in a concrete cell, involuntarily medicated, and isolated. Leading psychiatrist Vikram Patel has amassed a series of shocking photos from asylum settings around the globe -- some taken by 'inmates'. He's challenging his own profession to take action. And, the new Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Will it make a difference? In a historic process, self-identified 'psychiatric survivors' have been closely involved in its development.
Human Rights and psychiatry (Part 1 of 2): Should doctors be involved in interrogation or torture?
08/12/2007
They know the machinations of the mind better than many. So do mental health professionals have a legitimate role in the interrogation of prisoners of war or detainees, in the interests of national security? The American Psychiatric Association and Australia's equivalent have said 'no way'. The peak body for US psychologists have taken a different position. Torture, tough interrogation or treatment - where do the boundaries blur for healers who have taken the Hippocratic Oath?
Burma: 'I resist in my mind only'
06/10/2007
Medical anthropologist Monique Skidmore has conducted field work in Burma for over a decade, carefully probing the ways the state manipulates the emotional life of the Burmese, and the psychological strategies they adopt to survive under a military regime. Fear threads through every conversation and gesture. Also, updates from a health worker in the longstanding refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border. The mental health challenges are immense.
Mind Reading (Part 1 of 2): Neuroscience in the witness stand
23/06/2007
'But officer, my brain made me do it!' Brain scans are becoming commonplace as evidence in US courts, in the bid to convict offenders or free them. But is the technology half-baked? Can we biologically categorise people as criminals -- mad, bad and dangerous to know? Free will, privacy and personal responsibility are all up for grabs in the collision between science and the law.
In the mind of the child soldier
13/01/2007
Northern Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Columbia. Some of the world's conflicted countries where young children are recruited, or violently abducted, to serve as soldiers. Two psychologists at the coalface, and a teenage abductee, join Natasha Mitchell to discuss the complex psychology of child recruitment, reintegration and repatriation. Little innocents or self-aware agents? A confronting issue that's not straightforward. Stories of hope prevail too.
First Broadcast 12 August 2006
