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19-01-2011 Medical evidence has shown that long-term solitary confinement is a form of torture. Dr Joost J den Otter, Medical Director at the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), adds that while there is no doubt about the damage caused by long periods of isolation, solitary confinement for a short period may also cause psychological harm. Dr den Otter highlights the fact that many qualitative and quantitative scientific studies have documented how solitary confinement in prison has damaging health effects. He asserts that the scientific debate on solitary confinement as a method of torture has been settled for many years, but that it seems there is still confusion among policy makers, prison authorities, and the general public. A recent commentary published by the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law about solitary confinement and mental illness in U.S. Prisons, the authors, Jeffrey L. Metzner and Jamie Fellner, support Dr den Otter's judgment. "Isolation can be psychologically harmful to any prisoner, with the nature and severity of the impact depending on the individual, the duration of confinement, and particular conditions (e.g., access to natural light, books, or radio). Psychological effects can include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis". In August 2010, Physicians for Human Rights published a report (Experiments in Torture) which added to the growing body of evidence that solitary confinement causes psychological harm consistent with torture. In an interview with 'Life's Little Mysteries', Dr Scott Allen, one of the authors of the paper, said that solitary confinement "can lead to anxiety, depression, certainly disorientation, [and] it can even lead to thought disorders including psychotic thoughts." He added "The consequences can be significant." This backs up researcher Peter Scharff Smith, of The Danis

StanfordUniversity - November 10, 2008 - WARNING: CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT October 9, 2008 lecture by Philip Zimbardo during the 2008 Reunion Homecoming Classes Without Quizzes program. Why do good people turn evil? In what sense are evil and heroism comparable? How could the little old Stanford prison experiment reveal parallels and insights about the abuses by military guards at Abu Ghraib? Philip Zimbardo, professor of psychology, emeritus, is internationally recognized as a leading "voice and face of contemporary psychology" through his widely seen PBS-TV series, Discovering Psychology, his media appearances, best-selling trade books on shyness, and his classic research, The Stanford Prison Experiment.

An Israeli soldier posted herself photos on Facebook in uniform. She smiling beside bound and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners. It gets sharp criticism Monday from the Israeli military and Palestinian officials.

Jon Ronson is the author of The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, an exploration of what defines a psychopath. At TED2012, he told a part of that story on stage - how he met a man named Tony who was held for years in a psychiatric prison because he faked mental illness too well, and about how Ronson himself became trained (perhaps too well also) to spot psychopaths for himself.

Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person's thoughts. Every waking moment-and even in our dreams-we struggle to direct the flow of sensation, emotion, and cognition toward states of consciousness that we value.Drugs are another means toward this end. Some are illegal; some are stigmatized; some are dangerous-though, perversely, these sets only partially intersect. There are drugs of extraordinary power and utility, like psilocybin (the active compound in "magic mushrooms") and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), which pose no apparent risk of addiction and are physically well-tolerated, and yet one can still be sent to prison for their use-while drugs like tobacco and alcohol, which have ruined countless lives, are enjoyed ad libitum in almost every society on earth. There are other points on this continuum-3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or "Ecstasy") has remarkable therapeutic potential, but it is also susceptible to abuse, and it appears to be neurotoxic.[1]One of the great responsibilities we have as a society is to educate ourselves, along with the next generation, about which substances are worth ingesting, and for what purpose, and which are not. The problem, however, is that we refer to all biologically active compounds by a single term-"drugs"-and this makes it nearly impossible to have an intelligent discussion about the psychological, medical, ethical, and legal issues surrounding their use. The poverty of our language has been only slightly eased by the introduction of terms like "psychedelics" to differentiate certain visionary compounds, which can produce extraordinary states of ecstasy and insight, from "narcotics" and other classic agents of stupefaction and abuse.