Automatically translated from Basque, translation may contain errors. More information here. Elhuyarren itzultzaile automatikoaren logoa

Psychiatric violence is denounced in Bilbao by Harro Zoro Radical from all over the Spanish state

  • CAPV has the highest rate of electroshock practice in the Spanish State, while in Navarre, mechanical patient containment is common in psychiatric hospital units. The manifestation of Radical Crazy Prisoners of the State for the first time in Bilbao to denounce psychiatric violence and overmedication. “Psychiatric people are in a very serious situation.”
Iazko ekainean, lehen Harro Zoroa eguna antolatu zuten Euskal Herrian. Argazkia: Ecuador Etxea

07 May 2024 - 06:00
Last updated: 07:13

There is a lot of talk about mental health, “but there is still no talk of violations of the mental health system and human rights violations,” the Harro Zoroa movement criticized. Composed of psychiatric or psychiatric people, born in Toronto in the 1990s and spread to other territories.

In Euskal Herria, Zoroa GAM was born in 2018 and in our country medication is also administered forcefully, mechanical sustenances and threats are the daily bread, people go into psychiatric involuntary and electroshocks are practiced. The member of the movement Heiko Elbira told us that in the hospital of Basurto there are six electroshock machines, with CAPV being the highest rate of practice in Spain. In 2018, a response report to a request to the Government of Navarra also stresses that “Mechanical containment is a common and systematized activity in the clinical practice of psychiatric hospital units, much more common than professionals, users, public opinion and managers and politicians believe”.

Neither mechanical restraint, nor electroshock, nor medication… The movement will demand in Bilbao the cessation of psychiatric violence. “We do not ask for another model of psychiatry, but the abolition of psychiatry,” adds Heiko Elbira to ARGIA: “The psychiatric discourse individualizes the oppression that we suffer and gives answers like this, because the psychiatric systems are necessary to keep the system the same, all of them drugged.”

In Navarra, mechanical restraint is a common and systematized practice in the clinical practice of psychiatric hospital units, much more common than professionals, users, public opinion and politicians believe

The movement denounces that torture is carried out systematically in psychiatric practice, as reported in the reports of the United Nations Special Rapporteur 2017 and 2018. The report also points out that many people who are at a crossroads between race, class and gender are at greater risk of suffering the consequences of excessive medication. That is, “in psychiatry, they put the poorest, women, racialized, alone… The rich don’t end there,” says Elbira.

25 May, demonstration

Members of the state movement will meet for the first time in Bilbao on 25 May. From the Plaza de Unamuno you will head to Kiosko del Arenal and after the mobilization you will make a guateada in the Karmela.

Last June, the Basque Country movement organized the first Harro Zoroa, also in Bilbao.


You are interested in the channel: Psikiatria
Four years to recover life

Today I have come to start with my words.

Four years!

I've taken four years to get my life back.

Four years also lived to flee the prison.

Four years… In silence… Just… Leaving aside the life of the past… To understand the functioning of my different mind and to... [+]


"They prevent us from making decisions about our bodies."
Izei Etxeberria denounces the “bad attention” and “violent treatment” of the Gender Identity Unit of the Cruces Hospital.

2023-08-30 | Reyes Ilintxeta
Vicente Madoz. Humanistic psychiatrist
"We have found with pandemic weaker beings that overflow in situations of stress"
During this last half century, the psychiatrist Vicente Madoz has been very present in Navarre when talking about mental health, sex education, partner relationships, addictions or death. What he saw and learned in England in the 1960s brought him here, laying the foundation for... [+]

The Harro Zoroa Movement Takes Complaint Against Psychiatric Doctors On Weekend in Bilbao
“Hego Euskal Herria is the territory of the Spanish state where more electroshock is practiced; in the hospital of Basurto there are six electroshock machines,” explains ARGIA Heiko Elbira Zoroa, of the GAM group. To denounce these and other psychiatric practices, Harro... [+]

We're neurotic, sorry.

Last summer I taught a course on the prevention of neurosis as part of the Hik Hasi educational meetings. Many people signed up because the title was attractive, the safest, because it implied that mental health (or lack of health) is not something random, but something that can... [+]


2021-11-25 | Leire Artola Arin
Osakidetza opens two day psychiatric hospitals for adolescents in Bizkaia
Day hospitals are located in the Plaza Zabalburu of Bilbao and in the hospitals of Galdakao-Usansolo. According to the Basque Government, psychiatric care for children and young people will be "strengthened" in this way.

Itxaso Martín. Exploring the silences
"We believe that medicine and psychiatry are separate from society, but they're not."
Itxaso Martin (1981, Donostia) wrote a novel based on the history of his great-grandmother, Ni, Vera, who spent his last years in psychiatry. The research work was done for a master's degree with the same foundation, and, pulling it out, he has read 500 stories from a psychiatric... [+]

Eguneraketa berriak daude