“One more front in the dirty war”: The political instrumentalisation of psychiatry and the involvement of mental health professionals in state-sponsored human rights abuses during Argentina’s civil-military dictatorship (1976–1983)

This paper examines the instrumentalisation of psychiatric procedures and the complicity of physicians and mental health professionals in the state-sponsored terror of Argentina's civil-military dictatorship (1976-1983). Hitherto, these episodes have remained largely underexplored in broader historiography, as have their implications for modern psychiatric ethics. Drawing on archival records, victim testimonies, and secondary sources, this paper outlines how mental health expertise and psychiatric institutions were implicated in the junta's campaigns to subjugate perceived "subversive" tendencies in Argentinian society. To that end, two case descriptions are used to illustrate distinctive modalities of abuse: (1) the "depersonalisation" and "brainwashing" of political detainees in Rawson Prison in Argentinian Patagonia, where psychiatrists and psychologists participated in experimental repression programmes; and (2) the transfer of torture-induced psychiatric patients to military-controlled hospitals, where coercive pharmacological interventions, electroconvulsive therapy, and further physical violence were inflicted. The analysis highlights psychiatry's function as a mechanism for direct torture and a legitimising veneer for political persecution. In doing so, it integrates previously fragmented materials into a unified analytical framework and situates psychiatric abuses within wider transnational patterns of repression characteristic of other Latin American dictatorships. Moreover, in the context of contemporaneous denialist narratives in Argentina and ongoing international instances of psychiatric abuse worldwide, the paper underlines the persistent vulnerability of ethical safeguards, reemphasising calls for proactive measures to protect against future human rights violations.