Inside Story Americas: The ethics of solitary confinement (25 min)

Thanks for your post Jay! So spot on! I especially liked the last sentence which in my opinion is pertinent to many psychological problems. Sadly "environment" is not given the weight it should.

Jay Levin “Torture without Violence: clinical and ethical issues for Mental Health Workers in
the Treatment of Detainees” 1986 SAJHR 177 - 185 at p 178 et seq: ”It is appropriate to refer to
certain forms of detention as torture without physical violence. The non-physical but violent
stressors involved in detention have been popularized as debility, dependency and dread, and
comprise the DDD syndrome. Debility, dependency and dread are probably the most well-known
of the psychological stressors which occur in conditions of detention and cause psychological
distress.
‘Debility’ refers to the psychological effect caused by controlling sensory input from the
environment. Prolonged sensory isolation, for example, can result in increased suggestibility,
anxiety, tension, inability to concentrate or organize one’s thoughts, vivid sensory imagery, usually
visual, sometimes reaching the proportions of hallucinations with delusionary quality, body
illusions, somatic complaints, and intense accompanying subjective emotional reactions and,
generally, difficulty in organizing one’s behaviour. ... These three factors - uncontrollability,
unpredictability and unaccountability (UUU) are common to those situations which would be
described by the victim as torture. ... Psychotherapy cannot be more than supportive in the context
of detention, and at best may achieve symptomatic relief. Psychological intervention cannot be
a substitute for the re-establishment of normal social and environmental controls in the lif

Note that Wilbert Rideau says of the many reasons they may put you in solitary confinement one is "...just to show you whose got the power." Reminds me of the Power & Control model used in the field of domestic violence.

It's also worth noting that other animals, esp. mammals (social animals), suffer mental harm when they are put in captivity, like zoos and aquaria. One classification of abnormal behavior is stereotypy which includes "pacing, rocking, swimming in circles, excessive sleeping, self-mutilation (including feather picking and excessive grooming), and mouthing cage bars."