Rabbi's little helper
Forget 'Big Brother': Psychiatric drugs are frequently administered within the Haredi community at leaders' requests, in order to bring members in line with norms, say sources.
By Yair Ettinger
This is not a reality show. It's a true story that's been going on for years. No one denies it, neither the psychiatrists nor their patients: Psychiatric drugs are being given to ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, men, seminary girls and married women at the request of rabbis, yeshiva "supervisors" and marriage counselors. The furor that erupted recently after a psychiatrist prescribed pills to participants on the TV reality show "Big Brother" - apparently to help the production and not the patients - convinced some Haredi patients to come forward with prescriptions and documents attesting to a far broader practice.
Haaretz spoke to psychiatrists and others knowledgeable about psychiatric treatment in the Haredi community, and collected testimonies from half-a-dozen patients and their families. About half of them are Haredi and the others have left the community. Each told a different story, mentioning the names of senior psychiatrists, rabbis and community functionaries.
Last December, the Israel Psychiatric Association held a symposium titled "The Haredi Community as a Consumer of Mental-Health Services." Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, a Gur Hasid, was invited to speak, as were several psychiatrists who treat Haredi patients and well-known Haredi medical go-betweens (i.e., people who help mediate between patients and professional ).
Conference organizers included Prof. Omer Bonne, director of the psychiatry department at Hadassah University Hospital in Ein Karem, Jerusalem, who gave a talk about "Culture-dependent psychiatry in the Haredi community." Bonne, a highly esteemed veteran physician, praised that population's growing openness vis-a-vis the field, but made a few comments that caused some audience members to shift uneasily in their seats. For example, Bonne said that sometimes yeshiva students and married men should be given antidepressants even if they do not suffer from depression, because these drugs also suppress sex drive.
"Some behaviors put Haredim in conflict with their values and cause them mental problems, even to the point of depression," Bonne said. "My view concerning drug treatment in such cases has changed. For example, when I was young, idealistic and less experienced, whenever I had a case of homosexuality, masturbation - or, as Haredim put it, 'compulsiveness in sex' - I would say: 'Homosexuality is not a mental problem, masturbation is certainly not a mental problem or even a medical problem. I do not treat people who do not have a medical problem.'
"Over the years, I saw that people who do these 'awful' things suffer terribly because of the conflicts they create. Those urges, impulses or behaviors place them in conflict with their society, and then they become depressed. In these cases, I would indeed prescribe medicines that block these conditions."
The implication would seem to be that Prof. Bonne wants to prevent patients from experiencing mental conflict. In practice, treating such cases ostensibly puts the patients back on the straight and narrow, in keeping with the interests of rabbis (who are often the ones pushing for psychiatric treatment ). Bonne acknowledges that this may be an exceptional approach, but others agree with it, too. "Currently, their society has no good solution for this," he says, referring to homosexual urges. His remarks suggest that prescription drugs are often the only way out.
