[ReformationFan]

Didn’t the Soviet government use the “mental illness” routine against its dissidents?

[newheart]

A crime is a deviation from generally recognized standards of behavior frequently caused by mental disorder. Can there be diseases, nervous disorders among certain people in a Communist society? Evidently yes. If that is so, then there will also be offences, which are characteristic of people with abnormal minds. Of those who might start calling for opposition to Communism on this basis, we can say that clearly their mental state is not normal.—Nikita Kruschev

[BitWielder1]

Didn’t the Soviet government use the “mental illness” routine against its dissidents?

They did. Political opposition was considered a mental illness (let's face it, you had to be crazy to speak out against the old soviet regime, right?) and off to the gulags it was.
It is a very slipper slope indeed, exactly what mental conditions are serious enough to deprive you of your rights? It's a subjective and sliding scale.
Anything that would deem you "dangerous", including making posts on FR, could be used as an excuse.

[cripplecreek]

And they have the same plan here.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

Communist Goals (1963)