Citizens Commission on Human Rights of St. Louis

There have been over 20 pieces of federal pro-mental health legislation already introduced in 2009, with eight of them on mental health screening alone. These screening bills involve pregnant women and new mothers, children 0 to 5 years old and veterans of the military. And if that is not frightening enough, despite the complete lack of scientific evidence to substantiate any of the screening questionnaires used, completing them could result in a further 15 to 30 million Americans being prescribed dangerous psychiatric drugs.

We have an opportunity right now to warn policy makers about the economic and human risk that funding mental health screening brings. We need to educate these policy makers through a strong public awareness campaign—producing a new website specifically on screening with all the facts, and by doing one-on-one visits with them at the federal level during the next few weeks.

Dr. Jeffrey Schaler, Professor of Psychology and lecturer at American University, stated, “The New Freedom Commission Initiative on Mental Health likely poses one of the greatest threats to freedom in our contemporary society, such that we haven’t seen in 60 years. When the government gets involved in screening people for ‘mental illness,’ we run the risk of depriving any numbers of people of freedom.”

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St. Louis – Denouncing the fact that internationally more than 100,000 patients die each year in psychiatric institutions and an estimated 15,000 American children have died as a consequence of taking psychiatric drugs, the St. Louis Chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) launched the Grand Opening of  “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” international touring exhibition and documentaries.

The featured Keynote Speaker, Vice President of Information and Public Contact at Applied Scholastics International, William Garrett, officially opened the exhibit at 2:30 PM on Saturday, January 24, 2009 at Jamestown Mall in Florissant, Missouri. The exhibit is open daily until February 15.

The exhibit features 15 display panels that incorporate audio-visual presentations depicting human rights abuses by psychiatry and carry statements from health professionals, academics, legal and human rights experts, and victims of psychiatric brutalities. The exhibit also addresses a federal plan that would screen the state’s children for “mental illness” that could lead to a threefold increase in the number of children being subjected to the devastating effects of psychotropic drugs.

Portions of the touring exhibit also made an appearance in the Rotunda of the Missouri Capitol Building in Jefferson City the 19th-21st of January; and portions will also appear at the Working Women’s Survival Show at the St. Charles Convention Center the 13th-15th of February.

The 185-foot, state-of-the-art exhibit exposes psychiatry as an industry driven entirely by profit. It traces the origins of psychiatry, the role psychiatrists have played in the oppression of blacks and minorities, the roots of their eugenics programs and the pivotal part they played in the Holocaust. It also reveals how psychiatric drugs are behind gun-toting teens today going on shooting sprees, and how millions of federal dollars allocated to screen all 52 million American schoolchildren could increase both child deaths and acts of school violence. People touring the exhibit today signed a petition opposing funding and implementation of mental health screening in schools.

“The touring exhibit shows psychiatry’s deadly ‘treatments’ in graphic detail,” warns CCHR St. Louis chapter spokesperson, Teresa Hassler, who listed out psychosurgery, shock treatment, deadly restraint and the prevalent inhumane conditions of psychiatric facilities, and the forced drugging of children as young as six months old. “Most importantly, though, this exhibit provides practical guidance for lawmakers, educators, doctors, human rights advocates and private citizens so they can take action in their own spheres to bring psychiatry to account for their abuses.”

The touring “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” exhibit theme is patterned after a permanent museum by the same name at the Los Angeles headquarters of Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a psychiatric watchdog group with 300 chapters worldwide. Co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, CCHR investigates and exposes psychiatric violations of human rights.

Ms. Hassler said, “Our exhibit shows very clearly how, in the name of ‘help,’ psychiatry, in fact, destroys lives.”

A sampling of current statistics and facts shown in the exhibit bears this out:

• 20 million children worldwide are taking psychiatric drugs, including 10 million in the United States, which can cause suicide, hostility, violence, mania, strokes, heart attacks, diabetes and death.
• Antipsychotic drug prescriptions for children increased fivefold between 1993 and 2002 in the United States, during which time 45 children died from the drugs.
• In recent years, stimulant drugs have caused 19 child deaths, although as only 1% to 10% of drug adverse reactions are reported, the death toll from children taking antipsychotic drugs, stimulants and antidepressants could be as high as 15,000.
• 10% of American teens (2.3 million) are abusing psychiatric stimulants.
• More than 100,000 patients die each year in psychiatric institutions around the world.
• Psychiatrists are using electroshock, drugs and other barbaric means to torture political dissidents.
• Internationally, psychiatrists kill up to 10,000 people each year with their use of electroshock—460 volts of electricity sent searing through the brain.  Three-quarters of all electroshock victims are women.
• Psychiatrists and psychologists have raped 250,000 women.  Studies show that 10 to 25 percent of psychiatrists sexually assault their patients; of every 20 of these victims one is likely to be a minor.

Calls to Prohibit Mental Health Screening in Schools

On the eve of Mental Health Day (October 10, 2008), a candlelight vigil was held in the University City Loop in St. Louis in memory of the thousands of children that have died from psychiatric drugs. An estimated 1,340 under-18-year-olds die each year in the United States from psychiatric drug use. Large photos of children at the Vigil were testimony to the many tragic deaths. In recent years, the Food and Drug Administration has increased its warnings about these drugs causing psychosis, suicide, stroke, heart attacks, life threatening diabetes and death.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a psychiatric watchdog and human rights advocacy group that organized the vigil, says that mental health screening of students has exacerbated the problem, often wrongly identifying children as “mentally ill,” resulting in their being prescribed these drugs. Currently, there is a federal initiative to screen all 52 million American schoolchildren for mental disorders that could dramatically increase the number of children placed at risk with psychotropics.

People viewing the Vigil signed a Proclamation that calls on the State Department of Education to jettison psychological and psychiatric screening from their schools and for the state government to reallocate funding for such screening to educational, non-drug programs and additional teachers or tutors.

One screening program, TeenScreen, has an admitted 84 percent failure rate by wrongly identifying children as depressed or potentially suicidal that can lead to their being prescribed antidepressants that can induce suicidal thoughts and actions.
CCHR spokesperson Teresa Hassler said, “All the symptoms listed in the ‘Screen Information Form’ are extracted from those listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a manual criticized for its lack of reliability and conflict of interest with the pharmaceutical industry.”

A 2006 study published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics determined that psychiatric drug makers funded 100% of the DSM Task Force members that decided what “mood” and “psychotic” disorders were included in the DSM. This year, the Senate Select Finance Committee called on the APA to hand over its financial records relating to pharmaceutical companies. At least 30% of the APA’s income derives from drug makers.

Ms. Hassler said, “Around the world we are holding vigils as a reminder and warning that children are dying from psychotropic drugs that are often pushed through schools. The heavy reliance upon screening here is likely a major factor.” According to a study published in the September issue of the British-based journal BioMed Central, youngsters in the U.S. are three times likelier to be prescribed antidepressants and stimulants and twice as likely to be prescribed antipsychotic drugs, than counterparts in European countries such as Germany and the Netherlands.

Between 1995 and 2002, prescriptions of antipsychotics for children aged 2 to 18 leaped fivefold—from just under half a million to about 2.5 million. In 2003, the FDA warned that antipsychotic drugs could cause diabetes and blood-sugar abnormalities, after 45 child deaths had been reported.

Last year, The New York Times also pointed to the fact that psychiatrists top the list in drug maker gifts that influences drug prescription trends. In Minnesota it was determined that psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from makers of newer-generation antipsychotic drugs wrote, on average, three times as many prescriptions to children for these than psychiatrist who received less money or none.

In Vermont, drug-company payments to psychiatrists more than doubled from $20,835 in 2005 to an average of $45,692 in 2006. State Attorney General Bill Sorrell stated, “It is particularly troubling that the industry is paying large sums of money to influence prescribing practices involving psychiatric drugs.”

Unlike for most medical conditions, psychiatrists admit they do not know the cause of or cure for any mental disorder for which they prescribe mind-altering drugs. Dr. Thomas Szasz, professor of psychiatry emeritus at the State University of New York, Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York, says, “There is no blood or other biological test to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness, as there is for most bodily diseases.”

Proponents of TeenScreen claim that screening can prevent suicides. However, Robert Whitaker, science writer and author of Mad in America, says, “They’re pulling numbers out of thin air—falsely presuming that this crisis is about lack of access to drugs and calling for government to provide more and more of what many of us believe is the wrong kind of treatment.”

A 2005 study by Dr. David Healy and Graham Aldred from the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine, Cardiff University, Wales, reported that the studies of the newer antidepressants (Prozac, Zoloft, Effexor etc.) show that they increase the risk of suicide. The FDA has a “black box” on antidepressant packaging warning that the drugs can cause suicidal thoughts and actions in those 24 years of age and under.

Dr. Julian Whitaker, director of the renowned Whitaker Wellness Center in California, advises parents: “First of all, refuse to sign those [screening] consent forms when they come home from your child’s school—if they can’t test them, they can’t drug them.”

CCHR was established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and the eminent Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. It has helped obtain legislation protecting children from potentially lethal psychiatric drugs for 40 years.

http://psychrights.org/PR/080902PsychRightsvAlaskaNR.pdf

http://psychrights.org/states/NewYork/080818AnnLNR.pdf

jim.gottstein@psychrights.org

PsychRights Launches Pro Bono Recruitment Effort

As part of their Joint Task Force on Mental Legal Advocacy & Activism, the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights) today announced the launch of its effort to recruit pro bono attorneys to help defend New York citizens facing the horror of forced psychiatric drugging in the community.

PsychRights’ President, Jim Gottstein, said, “People think forced drugging makes the community safer, but the opposite is true. It is well established that psychiatric drugs forced on people increase rather than decrease violence. The idea that forced community psychiatric drugging makes people safer is a fraud perpetrated on the public by organizations like the Treatment Advocacy Center.”

The scientific evidence on this, the ineffectiveness of these drugs for most and extreme harm to all caused by these drugs, along with a legal analysis, has been put together for attorneys in Memorandum (Preliminary) Forced Psychiatric Drugging in the Community –Pro Bono Opportunity of Great Significance. Dan Hazen, PsychRights’ Northeast Coordinator said, “We hope members of the New York bar will read the memorandum and decide this is an issue deserving of pro bono services.” Attorneys interested in signing on or desiring more information may contact either Mr. Hazen or Mr. Gottstein at the contacts above or below.

Mr. Gottstein stated, “If nothing else, attorneys should be offended by the sham nature of the legal proceedings in which New York citizens are ordered by the courts to take these very debilitating, largely ineffective, and extremely harmful drugs.”

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is a public interest law firm devoted to the defense of people facing the horrors of unwarranted forced psychiatric drugging and electroshock. PsychRights is further dedicated to exposing the truth about psychiatric interventions and the courts being misled into ordering people subjected to these brain and body damaging drugs against their will. Extensive information about these dangers, and about the tragic damage caused by electroshock, is available on the PsychRights web site http://psychrights.org/.

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