Labelling unwelcome critics as “psychically ill”?
Experts are criticizing the tightening of laws affecting people with psychic illness in several German states. They argue that data protection and medical confidentiality are not guaranteed. Hamburg is also processing data on political opinions and ideological beliefs. One psychologist fears that the stricter laws could be used to discipline political dissidents. The Victims of Justice association recalls the case of Gustl Mollath. We are republishing this explosive report from Multipolar magazine.
Experts criticize the tightening of laws concerning the psychically ill in several German states
The tightening of laws affecting people with psychic illness in several German states is drawing criticism. Experts argue that neither data protection nor medical confidentiality is guaranteed. Furthermore, concerns are raised that lists could be compiled and medical data could fall into the wrong hands. There are even fears that people with unpopular views could be labelled psychically ill, classified as security risks, and consequently monitored.
A new law in Lower Saxony stipulates that psychically ill people deemed to pose a “permanent risk” should be more closely monitored. To prevent such risks, the exchange of data between psychiatric facilities, social psychiatric services, the police, and other security authorities will be significantly expanded. A similar law is planned in North Rhine-Westphalia.
In June 2023, the Hamburg Senate launched a package of measures to identify people “with a high risk potential for acts of aggression towards others” at an early stage and to prevent serious acts of violence. This package entails extensive data processing. In addition to personal data, communication data, and health information, political opinions as well as religious and philosophical beliefs are recorded.
More than 20 organizations protested in April against the amendment to the Lower Saxony law. The networking of information between security, health, weapons, and other authorities is taking place against the backdrop of the potential use of automated data analysis tools like Palantir by government agencies, according to the protest letter, which was initially signed by people affected by psychiatric treatment. The letter refers to the consequences of the collected patient records of people in psychiatric institutions during the Nazi era. This should be understood “as a serious warning.”
Clinical psychologist Harald Walach explained to Multipolar that severely disturbed, violent psychically ill people constitute “a very small group.” He stated that this group can be managed with existing laws. The fact that this often doesn’t occur, he explained, is due to “biased assessments” that allow dangerous violent offenders to go free. Walach believes it’s possible that, under the new laws, people with dissenting political opinions could be labelled psychically ill, classified as dangerous, and thus subjected to surveillance. In his view, tightening the laws could be a way to discipline all kinds of dissenters in the future.
Walach recalls the case of lawyer Beate Bahner, who criticized covid-19 measures and was briefly committed to a psychiatric hospital in April 2020. He also refers to the political psychiatric system of the Soviet Union, which, according to Leipzig psychiatrist Sonja Süß, targeted citizens who engaged in opposition activities.
Research repeatedly draws connections between “conspiracy theories” and psychic illness. For example, in February 2025, psychiatrist Henning Saß stated in the German magazine Apotheken Umschau that there are “far-reaching similarities, especially in the experiential structure and the claim to truth,” between people with delusions and conspiracy theorists. In May 2022, Heidelberg psychiatrist Thomas Fuchs wrote that conspiracy theories show “a clear parallel to the structure of paranoid meaning-making and delusion.” This includes the assumption that the elite has secret motives or that powerful groups control events. According to one analysis, research on conspiracy theories continues to be significantly shaped by the US historian Richard Hofstadter. He linked conspiracy theories and paranoia, thereby paving the way for the pathologization of speculation critical of those in power.
Thomas Repp, chairman of the association Victims of the Justice System, told Multipolar: “Even peaceful critics are often branded with a psychiatric label.” He refers to Gustl Mollath, who was committed to a psychiatric hospital in 2006. His former wife, a financial advisor at HypoVereinsbank, had filed charges against him for assault – 16 months after the alleged incident. Mollath spent more than seven years in the closed wards of the Bayreuth District Hospital. Only years later did it come to light that Mollath had actually brought up the bank’s involvement in money laundering and wanted to expose it. Experts and the justice system had dismissed his accounts of the bank’s and his ex-wife’s illegal financial dealings as “figments of the imagination” and “paranoid.”
yogaesoteric
July 21, 2026