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Wikipedia:Peer review/Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union/archive1

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Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because the person who wrote it feels that it is of FA quality, and a peer review is a necessary step in that direction. Thanks,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 1, 2011; 18:31 (UTC)

This is an excellent and really well researched article, however, I think it would require a lot of work for it to reach FA status. The two most significant issues are the article length and copyediting. Please bear in mind when reading these comments that this is my first peer review.

  • Length: At about 17,000 words of readable prose and 217,035 kbs the article is too long. It is currently the 174th longest article on wikipedia [1]. You might want to think about creating sub-articles on individual topics in the article and condensing these sections in the main article. The maximum length that this article should be is 6,000-10,000 words. The article would benefit from significant restructuring.
  • Copyediting: It's generally well written but there are significant copyediting issues - mostly in terms of English phrasing. I have done some work on the first three sections but it needs a lot more.
  • Headings: Several headings start with "the". These should be removed (e.g. "The Review Committee" -> Review Committee"). See MOS:HEAD. Done
  • Heading: Normative Documents. This heading title should be changed as it is not clear from the title what the section is about and the word "normative" has very particular and specialist connotations in English usage. Perhaps a title like: "KGB decree on the creation of network of political psychiatric hospitals" or "Plan to create political psychiatric hospitals" would be more appropriate?
  • DAB: 2 instances. Done
  • References. The reference system works pretty well throughout the article. However, in the article lede where there are multiple citations it becomes a little unreadable. Would it be possible to aggregate these citations into single footnotes?
  • Acronyms. Explain terms such as MVD or GDR in the text and then introduce the acronym. E.g. "... special psychiatric hospitals run by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) of the Russian Federation.” Per WP:MOS Write out both the full version and the abbreviation at first occurrence
  • The 1992 psychiatric examination of Grigorenko was described by the Nezavisimiy Psikhiatricheskiy Zhurnal in its numbers 1–4 of 1992. This can probably be deleted.
  • the anti-psychotic drug aminazin known in English as Thorazine. The compound is known as chlorpromazine and the brand name was Thorazine in the US and Largactil in Europe.
  • "After the joint session of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences on June 28 — July 4, 1950 and during the session of the Presidium of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Board of the All-Union Society of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists on October 11–15, 1951, the leading role was given to Snezhnevky's school." It's not clear exactly what is being stated here. Did all of these sessions confer on Snezhnevky and his followers a leading role.
  • "Pisarev was committed to the Special Psychiatric Hospital in Leningrad which along with an analogous hospital in Sychevka has started functioning since the Second World War". This is the first mention of “Special Psychiatric Hospital” in the article. The term needs to be explained when it is first introduced. What does "Special Psychiatric Hospital" mean in this instance in what sense was the Sychevka hospital analogous to the one in Leningrad?
  • Figures. The presentation here I think lacks a bit of clarity as it moves from 365 people and "surely hundreds more" to "thousands" to "two thousand cases" to "twenty thousand" to "fifteen or twenty thousand". Does the 365 figure refer to known individuals detained?
  • Russian Mental Health Law: What legal framework was in place before the dissolution of the USSR? Use of the term “the Act” should be preferred to the “the Law”. Maybe change the heading of this section to “Russian Mental Health Act (1993)”?
  • Analysis: The first two paragraphs of this section would provide a good introduction to the section on Russian Mental Health Law
  • Use of psychiatry against religious minorities in post-Soviet times. Much of this section is not actually about the persecution of religious minorities but various human rights or political activists.

It is a very good article on a very interesting topic but it really needs some input from a native English speaker. FiachraByrne (talk) 23:05, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments I agree that this is an important article and an interesting read, but that it would have a hard time passing FAC in its current state. FiachraByrne asked me to look this over as the preceding was his or her first peer review (nice job, by the way). Here are some additional suggestions for improvement.

  • Watch POV language like "most somber event in the history" - A precursor of later abuses in psychiatry in the Soviet Union and the most somber event in the history of Russian-Soviet psychiatry ...
  • Generally if the same reference is used for two sentences in a row, then it only needs to be at the end of the second sentence. One example Psychiatry possesses a inherent capacity for abuse that is greater than in other areas of medicine.[8]:65 The diagnosis of mental disease can give the state license to detain persons against their will and insist upon therapy both in the interest of the detainee and in the broader interests of society.[8]:65
  • If something has a specific name commonly used in English, I would give that - so the "Joint Session" section has a note "Main article: Pavlovian session" but the words "Pavlovian session" are never used in the section here. Instead it just says Held in the name of Ivan Pavlov it considered the status of several leading neuroscientists ...
  • Similar things happen with the names at the end of Background - Serbsky Center does not appear in this article, instead it reads ...was led by the Moscow Institute for Forensic Psychiatry named after Vladimir Serbsky etc. I am not an expert, but if the Wikipedia article is named Serbsky Center, that is probably the most common name in English and should be used here. If you have reliable English sources that say otherwise, feel free to disagree.
    • It is widely known that the USSR had the only one institute for forensic psychiatry whose full name was the Serbsky Central Research Institute for Forensic Psychiatry. The Institute was named after Vladimir Serbsky. The Serbsky Central Research Institute for Forensic Psychiatry and the Serbsky Institute are used as synonyms. However, I have no source to confirm this statement by citing a source. --Psychiatrick (talk) 18:07, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Popular culture section would be a problem at FAC. It also has a lot of short (one or two sentence) paragraphs which should be combined with others or perhaps expanded.

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 05:15, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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