The Hidden Crisis in Psychiatry: How Overmedication and Coercion Are Failing Mental Health

Posted on August 4, 2025 by cchrstl

Overmedication and coercive psychiatric practices—such as forced drugging, institutionalization without consent, and diagnostic overreach—are gaining increasing public attention. Especially concerning is how these practices affect marginalized groups and how they are justified in the name of “mental health care.”

Mental health awareness has exploded in recent years, and with it, a push for more effective care. But beneath the surface of these well-intentioned campaigns lies a darker, more urgent reality: the widespread use of coercion and overmedication in psychiatry.

A groundbreaking doctoral dissertation by Spanish researcher Henning Garcia Torrents reveals that what many assume to be “mental health care” often amounts to systemic abuse—and it’s all too common. The thesis, based on years of fieldwork, surveys, and lived experience, exposes a mental health system that regularly violates the rights of the very people it claims to help.

At the heart of the issue is pharmacocentrism—a near-obsessive reliance on psychiatric drugs to manage mental distress. These drugs are frequently prescribed without informed consent, and often at dosages or combinations that cause serious harm. The result? A silent epidemic of iatrogenic illness (that is, harm caused by medical treatment itself), including metabolic disorders, cognitive decline, emotional blunting, and in some cases, irreversible damage.

Torrents’ work documents a psychiatric culture that equates dissent with disease. Expressing one’s pain, resistance to treatment, or even questioning a diagnosis can be enough to trigger forced hospitalization or treatment. Instead of being asked what happened to them, patients are too often labeled as “non-compliant” or “delusional”—stripped of personal agency, dignity, and credibility.

Even more disturbing is how this coercion becomes routine. People are prescribed harmful and often addictive psychiatric drugs not because it’s proven to help them recover, but because it makes them easier to manage. Families, overwhelmed and unsupported, sometimes turn to psychiatry not for healing, but for containment, epitomized by the involuntary commitment of inconvenient family members (or as it is euphemistically called, “civil commitment”). Governments enable and legitimize these choices, often without any real oversight or accountability.

For example, the Missouri Revised Statutes (RSMo) Chapter 632 Section 300, Chapter 660 Section 290, Chapter 632 Section 305 and Chapter 552 Section 20 specify the conditions under which, and by whom, someone can be forcibly incarcerated in a mental health facility. Involuntary commitment laws hike federal, state, county, city and private health care costs under the strange circumstance of a patient–recipient who cannot say no.

There is another way.

Guidance issued jointly in 2023 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) lays out steps towards ending coercive practices and “establishing mental health services that are respectful of human dignity and comply with international human rights norms and standards.”

Those standards call for “free and informed consent as the basis of all mental health-related intervention,” as well as patients’ “effective and meaningful participation” in mental health treatment.

This referenced dissertation doesn’t just critique; it offers a roadmap for reform. Through what it calls “shared decision-making” and “dialogical practice,” Torrents advocates for a mental health system that sees patients not as problems to be fixed, but as people to be heard. This means involving them directly in treatment choices, prioritizing recovery over sedation, and addressing the structural causes of suffering such as poverty, trauma, and exclusion—instead of pathologizing them.

Imagine a system where doctors work with, not on, their patients. Where communities provide real support, and mental health isn’t outsourced to a pill bottle or an enforced institutionalization.

This vision is not Utopian—it’s already being piloted in small pockets around the world, from Open Dialogue in Finland to trauma-informed care models in the U.S. What Torrents’ thesis makes clear is that we have the choice, the science, the ethics, and the stories to guide us. What we need now is the courage to act. Contact your local, state and federal officials and representatives and let them know what you think about psychiatric fraud and abuse.

If you’ve ever felt uneasy about the quickness with which psychiatry reaches for the prescription pad, you’re not alone. And you’re not wrong. It’s time we ask harder questions: Who benefits from this model of care? Who gets silenced? And most importantly—what kind of mental health system do we want to build?

Let’s stop pretending that coercion is care. Let’s start listening.

Have you or someone you love been impacted by overmedication or coercive psychiatric practices? Report your experience here.

Your mental health, and the mental health of your family, friends and associates, can be questioned by just about anyone. If this makes you uncomfortable, execute a Living Will (Letter of Protection from Psychiatric Incarceration and/or Treatment).

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Sometimes I Just Feel Like A Fake

Posted on July 28, 2025 by cchrstl

Imposter Syndrome, first described by two psychologists in 1978, is getting a lot of attention in social media, often by coaches, psychologists or psychiatrists advertising their expertise in helping a person get over it.

Imposter Syndrome (aka imposter phenomenon): Suffering from feelings of intellectual and/or professional fraudulence; the generally false perception of self-doubt in one’s abilities and accomplishments, particularly by otherwise high-functioning persons.

[imposter: assumption of a false identity; pretending to be someone else; ultimately from Latin imponere, to put in or upon, impose, deceive.]

Connections with Psychiatry

Comorbidity: The simultaneous presence of two or more conditions in a patient.

Discussions of imposter syndrome often involve the observation that it co-occurs (has comorbidity) with so-called psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, depression, or other mood or personality disorders named in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the fraudulent psychiatric billing bible used for insurance reimbursement. Poor or low self-esteem is a popular one, expressed in the DSM as “Developmental coordination disorder”.

It should be no surprise that imposter syndrome is being researched in various ethnic minority groups, which we know are already being targeted by psychiatry for harmful mental health services. African Americans receiving mental health services are disproportionately assessed with disruptive, defiant and psychotic disorders, evidence of the systemic racism that psychiatric and psychological associations admit is ingrained in mental health practices.

Imposter syndrome itself is not separately diagnosed as a mental disorder, but it can be the subject of psychiatric treatment when observed as present with another psychiatric diagnosis.

As with other DSM diagnoses, there is no clinical test for it, and of course no known medical etiology; its presence remains an opinion based on observations of various criteria, although there is no generally accepted set of such criteria. There is particular psychiatric interest in this phenomenon since getting it voted into the DSM opens up a new class of potential patients and potential income from its treatment.

Recommended treatments include counseling, particularly Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT); psychotherapy; and psychiatric drugs for comorbid behavioral conditions.

CBT is a form of psychotherapy that attempts to modify dysfunctional emotions, behaviors, and thoughts — by evaluating for the person, challenging the person’s behaviors, and getting the person to change those behaviors, often in combination with psychiatric drugs.

The Etiology (The Actual Causes of a Condition)

As a result of psychiatric and psychological intervention in schools, harmful behaviorist programs such as “values clarification,” “outcome based education,” “mastery learning,” “self-esteem” classes, and psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs now decimate our schools. For more than 40 years these programs have been a destructive failure, in effect escalating the very problems that psychiatrists claim they prevent or resolve. Could this be one of the precursors of the current spate of imposter syndromes?

Instead of directing children toward genuine achievement and the demonstration of competence they can be proud of, the psychiatric “self-esteem” concept is to tell the child he has accomplished something whether he has or not. Sounds like this could indeed be the etiology of imposter syndrome that psychiatry has not been able to find.

The only thing that causes self-esteem is confidence and production. Confidence is intimately related to competence; and competence is based upon observation, study and practice. Thus we have the lead-in to an actual effective treatment for imposter syndrome.

The Bottom Line

Knowing all this now, are you going with the psychiatric promotion of imposter syndrome, which will likely lead to harmful psychotropic drugs; or are you going with real competence and confidence to bolster self-esteem, which you can do yourself with observation, study and practice?

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When Stopping Antidepressants, Withdrawal Symptoms May Be Severe and Persistent, New Research Finds

Posted on July 21, 2025 by cchrstl

Research in recent years indicates that withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants are common and are more severe and long-lasting for some, with long-term users especially at risk of the symptoms.

by  CCHR National Affairs Office

Withdrawal symptoms are common for patients trying to quit their antidepressants, and for a substantial proportion of these users, the withdrawal effects are severe and long-lasting, a new study indicates.

While there is disagreement in research findings over the years about the incidence, severity and duration of withdrawal symptoms from stopping antidepressants, research in recent years has indicated that the symptoms are more prevalent and may be worse and linger longer than previously thought, especially for long-time users. 

To collect and further assess data on withdrawal symptoms, British researchers surveyed adult patients, recruited from primary care settings, who had ever tried to stop antidepressants.  The 310 respondents to the survey met the minimum number the researchers deemed necessary to determine the incidence of withdrawal symptoms.

The  results  of their survey showed that 79% of antidepressant users experienced some degree of withdrawal symptoms, with nearly half of them (45%) reporting that the symptoms were severe or moderately severe.  More than one in three (38%) were not able to stop antidepressants after one or more attempts. 

When stopping their antidepressants, more than half of survey respondents reported experiencing some degree of increased anxiety, worsened mood, agitation, tearfulness, fatigue, insomnia, mood swings, irritability, confusion or trouble concentrating, angry outbursts, headache, forgetfulness, dizziness/lightheadedness, and/or derealization/depersonalization.

As for how long the withdrawal symptoms persisted, 59% reported their symptoms lasted less than 4 weeks, while one in five (20%) reported a duration of more than 3 months and one in ten (10%) experienced symptoms for more than a year. 

Those who used antidepressants for more than 24 months before trying to stop were five times more likely to experience severe withdrawal symptoms and to be unable to stop than users who took the drugs for less than 6 months. 

“Antidepressant withdrawal symptoms were common, and severe and prolonged for a substantial proportion of users,” wrote the study’s lead author, Mark A. Horowitz, MBBS, Ph.D., researcher and founder of the Psychiatric Drug Deprescribing Clinic at North East London NHS Foundation Trust. 

The researchers in the study recommended that antidepressant “guidelines should be updated accordingly and patients informed of these risks” when deciding whether to start or stop taking the drugs.  They also advised that “the increasing withdrawal risks with longer use provides one rationale to minimise long-term antidepressant prescribing.”  The study was published in  Psychiatry Research. 

An urgency to know more about antidepressant withdrawal symptoms and how to treat patients experiencing them comes from the fact that some 45 million Americans are currently taking antidepressants.  Among them is a growing number who have reportedly used the drugs for years.  As recent research is indicating, an untold number of them may no longer be depressed, but instead be unable to come off their antidepressants because of the debilitating withdrawal symptoms they experience.  

“Some 15.5 million Americans have taken antidepressants for at least five years,” according to science reporter Benedict Carey,  writing  in the  New York Times  in 2018.  “The rate has almost doubled since 2010, and more than tripled since 2000,” he added.

“What you see is the number of long-term users just piling up year after year,” said Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, quoted in Carey’s article.

Other recent research has also  indicated  that the longer antidepressants were used, the greater the risk of experiencing withdrawal symptoms when stopping.

Even more fundamentally, recent research findings have raised the question of prescribing antidepressants in the first place.  Because a common rationale for prescribing SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) antidepressants, the most commonly prescribed type of antidepressant, is to correct a chemical imbalance in the brain, researchers recently conducted a comprehensive  review  of all relevant research and found that the theory of a low level of the brain chemical serotonin causing depression is not supported by scientific evidence.  The researchers conducting the study wrote that the finding “calls into question the basis for the use of antidepressants.”

“The FDA must take immediate action due to the growing body of research indicating that withdrawal symptoms when attempting to stop using antidepressants are more widely experienced and potentially more severe and persistent than current prescribing information and medication guides indicate,” said Anne Goedeke, president of the CCHR National Affairs Office.  “With tens of millions of Americans taking antidepressants, many of them for years, FDA action is long overdue on this urgent public health issue.”

The content on this site is for informational purposes only and is not intended to substitute for personal medical advice given by a physician or other prescriber. 

Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of an antidepressant or other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms or other complications.

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New Report Reveals Involuntary Commitment in North Carolina Hospital Emergency Departments is Overused, Misused, and Harmful

Posted on July 10, 2025 by cchrstl

Report finds individuals held against their will for mental health conditions may not be given due process for extended periods of time, may be subjected to abusive treatment while detained, and may endure serious disruptions to their lives.

by  CCHR National Affairs Office

A troubling new report details traumatic and disturbing experiences of people held against their will in hospital emergency departments in North Carolina under state law allowing involuntary detention of individuals deemed a danger to themselves or others and in need of treatment.  This civil process, meant to be a last resort, has become a convenient option, or “easy button,” according to a psychiatrist quoted in the  report.

Entitled “Involuntary Commitment in NC: Overused, Misused, and Harmful,” the report is the result of more than a year of investigation by Disability Rights North Carolina (DRNC) into the real-life impact of the use of the state’s involuntary commitment law.  DRNC is North Carolina’s federally-mandated Protection and Advocacy (P&A) organization, one of 57 P&As across the country, charged by Congress with advocating for the legal rights of people with disabilities.

DRNC leads off its report with its overarching finding: “What was once meant to be a narrowly applied intervention has devolved into a widespread, expensive, wasteful, and abusive practice that is failing those it purports to help.”  It further characterizes the involuntary commitment process as “a deeply flawed system that causes lasting harm instead of delivering help.”

The organization found that individuals are detained in hospital emergency rooms without access to legal representation, often for days, weeks, or even months, while waiting for an available bed and psychiatric evaluation at a psychiatric facility.  While being detained, “individuals – including some young children – are subjected to strip searches, physical restraints, forced medication” and, when being transported to a psychiatric facility, may be placed in handcuffs and shackles, according to the report.

Further criticizing the process, DRNC reports that the involuntary commitment process “often excludes family members and guardians from decisions” being made about the individuals being held, and that the detentions can result in job loss, financial hardship, and other disruption to lives.  After an involuntary commitment, a person cannot legally own a firearm or engage in hunting, recreational shooting, or gun collecting, and may be disqualified from serving in the military, law enforcement, or on a jury.

The report notes that “some magistrates issue custody orders for IVC [involuntary commitment] without understanding the legal criteria and defer to people requesting the IVC, resulting in people wrongfully being taken into custody by law enforcement for an examination at an ED [emergency department].”  The report goes on to say that “nursing homes and assisted living facilities misuse the IVC process to ‘dump’ people with dementia and that spouses and domestic partners misuse the IVC process as a means of control.”

DRNC sees a positive trend in the growing number of alternative community sources of help for individuals under emotional stress.  “Some enlightened community leaders are innovating creative solutions to support healing in their communities and keep people out of crisis,” DRNC reports.  The organization calls for an urgent expansion of, and support for, alternative care that is “effective, humane, and recovery-focused.”

In 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) jointly issued new guidance calling on U.N. member nations to end involuntary mental health practices.  Explaining their stance, they wrote: “A growing body of evidence sets out how coercive practices negatively impact physical and mental health, often compounding a person’s existing condition while alienating them from their support systems.”

WHO also stated, in earlier guidance issued in 2021, that its opposition to involuntary mental health treatment extends even to those experiencing acute mental distress. WHO  wrote that individuals in mental health crisis “are at a heightened risk of their human rights being violated, including through forced admissions and treatment…. These practices have been shown to be harmful to people’s mental, emotional and physical health, sometimes leading to death.”

Recent research supports WHO’s position, indicating that overall, forced hospitalization for mental health treatment not only does not benefit patients’ mental health condition or reduce their risk of suicide, but potentially increases the risk of  suicide attempts  after release.

Still other research has revealed racial disparities in the use of involuntary commitment.  A recent  study  in Boston found that among individuals for whom requests were made under Massachusetts law to transport them against their will for psychiatric evaluation, 41% were for individuals identified as Black or African American, although this racial group comprises only 23% of Boston’s population.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) continues to be a global leader in the fight to eliminate coercive and abusive mental health practices, including involuntary detention, seclusion, restraints, forced drugging, and electroshock.

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Research Results Suggest Patients’ “Treatment-Resistant Depression” May Actually Be Antidepressants’ Failure

Posted on June 23, 2025 by cchrstl

Even clinicians call for an approach to alleviating depression that does not rely on antidepressants, which research has found to have questionable effectiveness and increased risks of serious side effects.

by  CCHR National Affairs Office 

Deeply depressed patients who do not get symptom relief after trying two or more antidepressants at the recommended dose and length of time are typically  considered  in psychiatry as having “treatment-resistant depression,” but research indicates the drugs themselves may be to blame for the treatment failure.

A new study sheds light on the extent to which antidepressants failed to relieve symptoms in patients experiencing deep depression.  Researchers at the University of Birmingham in the U.K.  found  that half (48%) of 5,136 seriously depressed adults were considered treatment-resistant, with four out of 10 (37%) of them having tried four or more antidepressants without relief.  What’s more, the researchers noted that each failed treatment compounded patients’ depression severity.

Even clinicians interviewed as part of the study called for a different strategy for treating depression.  The researchers described that new strategy as “a holistic, patient-centered treatment approach, as the ‘one size fits all’ approach, typically characterized by an overreliance on pharmacological solutions, [is] inadequate.”

Other research has indicated that antidepressants have limited, if any, benefit over dummy pills (placebos).  In 2023, researchers re-evaluated data from an influential study on antidepressants, funded by the National Institute on Mental Health and conducted from 2000-2004, which had found a 67% remission rate after the use of up to four antidepressants.  The recent  re-analysis  of the data, however, corrected methodology used in the earlier study and found that the remission rate was just 35%, meaning only one in three people using antidepressants achieved remission of their symptoms.

Another recent study found even less benefit to patients from antidepressants.  A 2020  review  of evidence on the effectiveness of the drugs concluded not only that “antidepressants seem to have minimal beneficial effects on depressive symptoms” in patients with deep depression, but that the drugs also “increase the risk of both serious and non-serious adverse events.” 

“Antidepressants should not be used for adults with major depressive disorder before valid evidence has shown that the potential beneficial effects outweigh the harmful effects,” the researchers in that study advised.

Adverse effects of antidepressants include weight gain, nausea, insomnia, agitation, emotional blunting, sexual dysfunction, suicide and violence.  An analysis of the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System in 2010 found that 31 out of 484 prescription drugs were disproportionately associated with violence, and 11 of those 31 were antidepressants.  

On discontinuing antidepressants, patients may experience  withdrawal symptoms that can be severe and long-lasting.  One study found that  more than half  (56%) of the people who attempt to come off antidepressants experience withdrawal effects, with nearly half (46%) of them describing the symptoms as severe.  It is not uncommon for the withdrawal effects to last for weeks, months, or even longer.

In 2018, a citizen petition from medical researchers was delivered to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), calling on the agency to strengthen the warning on antidepressants’ labeling to adequately convey the serious risk of persistent,  even permanent  sexual dysfunction after the use of antidepressants is stopped. 

Antidepressants are the most widely prescribed class of psychiatric drugs.  Currently, over 11% of U.S. adults – one in nine – are prescribed medication for depression, with twice as many women (15%) as men (7%) using the drugs, according to a new  report  from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Antidepressants are prescribed for nearly 6 million young people aged 0- 24, for whom the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has required a warning in the drugs’ prescribing information about the increased risk of suicide from using the drugs.

A landmark 2022 study found that, despite decades of brain research into the widely promoted theory of a chemical imbalance in the brain causing depression, there is  no conclusive evidence of a chemical imbalance or other brain abnormality causing depression.  This finding calls into question the prescribing of antidepressants, the researchers who conducted that study wrote, as antidepressants have been prescribed to fix a supposed chemical imbalance. 

For years, psychiatrists were complicit in promoting the chemical-imbalance theory, a 2022  study  concluded, referencing the considerable coverage  the theory received in psychiatric and psychopharmaceutical journals.

“The FDA, which is responsible for ensuring pharmaceutical drugs are safe, must take immediate action due to the growing body of research indicating that adverse effects when using or attempting to stop using antidepressants are more widely experienced and potentially more severe than current prescribing information and medication guides indicate,” said Anne Goedeke, president of the CCHR National Affairs Office.  “FDA action is long overdue on this urgent public health issue.”

The content on this site is for informational purposes only and is not intended to substitute for personal medical advice given by a licensed physician.  Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of an antidepressant is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms or other complications. 

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St. Louis Area Psychiatrist Committing Health Crimes

Posted on June 9, 2025 by cchrstl

In 2005 an investigation of the Malik family of psychiatrists in the Greater St. Louis Metropolitan area revealed that they were the top fraud violators of the psychiatric profession in the St. Louis area. 

The fraud investigator from IntegriGuard LLC of Omaha, Nebraska (a private company that had a contract to investigate Medicare and Medicaid fraud) at that time said, “When we are done with our fraud investigation we are sending to the Federal HHS OIG our recommendation that the Maliks and Psych Care Consultants be charged with criminal actions.”

Several complaints were filed against members of the Malik organization with no immediate results.

However, we can announce today that Dr. Mohd Azfar Malik, 71, pleaded guilty in April 2025 to making false statements related to health care matters.

Malik, the psychiatrist who owns Psych Care Consultants LLC, will surrender his Drug Enforcement Administration registrations authorizing him to administer controlled substances.

The U.S. Department of Justice noted on May 22, 2025 that “Dr. Malik admitted submitting claims for payment to Medicare, Medicaid and private health insurers in which he falsely claimed to have performed in-person services when he was out of Missouri or out of the country.”

Dr. Asim Muhammad Ali, 54, an internal medical specialist working for Malik, also pleaded guilty to illegally distributing controlled substances (ketamine) and several other crimes.

They both are scheduled to be sentenced in August, 2025.

Not only have they committed fraud, they have also committed patient abuse, since the use of ketamine to treat so-called depression is unethical and actually harmful, since it precludes the patient from finding out what is actually wrong and getting that treated. 

Ketamine, a powerful psychedelic anesthetic, is being relentlessly touted as a “new antidepressant” when in fact it just knocks you out so you don’t feel much of anything. Ketamine is also known to be a date-rape drug, used by rapists to quell their victim’s movements.

Psychiatrists pushing ketamine are shameful drug pushers who are making a buck off people’s misfortune, and defrauding insurance providers in the process.

If you know someone who has been abused by psychiatry, encourage them to file a complaint here.

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CCHR Protests Coercive Psychiatric Practices, Calls for Human Rights-Based Mental Health Treatment Based on Consent

Posted on June 2, 2025 by cchrstl

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights advocates for the adoption of international standards in the U.S. that call for ending involuntary mental health treatment and ensuring human rights in the field of mental health.

by  CCHR National Affairs Office

A coalition of human rights advocates, civil rights leaders, clergy, medical professionals, and attorneys, led by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), protested at the Los Angeles site of the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association to call for ending forced mental health treatment.  That behavioral treatment includes involuntary institutionalization, nonconsensual electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, or electroshock), forced drugging, and the use of restraints and seclusion.

The May 17 protest focused on the tragic deaths of people, especially young people, who died from mental health treatment involving restraints.  Among them were Ja’Ceon Terry, a 7-year-old who suffocated while being restrained at a residential behavioral treatment center in Kentucky, and Cornelius Frederick,16, who died after being restrained at a Michigan facility for youth with behavioral problems.

“Until coercive and deadly practices in mental health are prohibited, vulnerable individuals – especially children – will continue to suffer,” said Jan Eastgate, president of CCHR International, speaking at the protest.

Rev. Fred Shaw, Jr., president of the Inglewood South Bay branch of the NAACP, spoke to the gathering about the disproportionate use of restraints on African Americans. Research has indicated that Black psychiatric inpatients are nearly twice as likely to be subjected to physical, mechanical, and chemical restraint compared to White patients and more likely to be restrained longer.

Guidance issued jointly in 2023 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) lays out steps towards ending coercive practices and “establishing mental health services that are respectful of human dignity and comply with international human rights norms and standards.” 

Those standards call for “free and informed consent as the basis of all mental health-related intervention,” as well as patients’ “effective and meaningful participation” in mental health treatment, according to the WHO/OHCHR guidance.

The World Psychiatric Association has committed to ending coercive practices, but the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has not yet come into alignment with this international standard.  CCHR has called on the APA to issue a formal statement in support of the elimination of coercive psychiatric practices and involuntary detentions.

During the protest, CCHR also pointed to the failure of massive federal mental health funding to reduce the U.S. suicide rate.  While mental health funding totaled some $329 billion in 2022, a 315% increase from 2000, the suicide rate hit a record high in 2022, a 37% increase since 2000, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  Over 49,000 people died by suicide in 2023, or one death every 11 minutes.

CCHR continues to call on Congress to redirect mental health funding to programs and services that provide effective help for Americans experiencing mental health issues.

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CCHR Promotes Human Rights During Mental Health Awareness Month

Posted on May 19, 2025 by cchrstl

Citizens Commission on Human Rights advocates the global adoption of international human rights standards that call for informed consent to mental health treatment and an end of coercive psychiatric practices.

by  CCHR National Affairs Office

During Mental Health Awareness Month, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is focusing on activities to ensure human rights in the field of mental health.  This advocacy is consistent with new calls from the World Health Organization (WHO) for human rights-based mental health treatment based on informed consent and ending coercive psychiatric practices.

As a major focus of its national efforts, CCHR has committed to raising awareness of the abusive and costly practice of detaining people against their will in psychiatric facilities.  Research indicates that involuntary psychiatric confinements have been increasing at  three times  the rate of the increase in population.  It has been estimated that four of every ten admissions to psychiatric facilities are involuntary, a figure that reportedly rose by 27% over the last decade, according to the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors.

Media  investigations  and U.S. Justice Department  complaints  have alleged that patients have been wrongly committed to psychiatric facilities, given unnecessary treatment that has harmed them, and their insurance fraudulently billed.

CCHR chapters around the world have for years complained to the proper authorities on behalf of individuals reporting to the organization that they were wrongly committed to a psychiatric facility, forced to take psychiatric drugs, held for long periods of time, traumatized by circumstances in the facilities, and released in worse condition than when they were first detained.

To restore human rights to the field of mental health, CCHR is actively raising awareness of the  Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights  and calling for its global adoption.  This Declaration, like the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that inspired it, lays out fundamental human rights, but as specific to the field of mental health. These rights include the right to be treated with dignity, the right to fully informed consent to mental health treatment based on the full disclosure of risks, as well as the right to refuse consent and the right to know what alternative treatments are available. 

WHO’s recently issued  Guidance on Mental Health Policy and Strategic Action Plans  forwards the organization’s push in recent years for person-centered care, based on informed consent, to replace involuntary psychiatric practices, which it has found are ineffective and can be harmful to mental health. 

WHO further calls for an end to the overreliance on the biomedical model of psychiatry, which focuses on psychotropic drugs to reduce mental health symptoms, but ignores the important physical, social, and environmental factors that affect individuals’ mental health.  WHO is promoting a shift to “approaches that are more person-centred, recovery-oriented, and grounded in human rights.”

CCHR has  called on  the American Psychiatric Association to renounce coercive psychiatric practices, in line with international human rights standards.  These practices include involuntary institutionalization, involuntary medication, involuntary electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, or electroshock), and physical, chemical and mechanical restraint.

CCHR exposes psychiatric violations of human rights through its traveling exhibit, displayed at venues that have included the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation annual legislative conference in Washington, DC.  Research has  found  that people transported against their will for psychiatric evaluation are disproportionately Black people.

Most recently, CCHR provided testimony for a Maryland bill, now passed into law, that  prohibits  young people from being picked up in the middle of the night and having blindfolds, zip ties, and leather straps used on them during transport to residential behavioral treatment programs by for-profit transport services.  Paris Hilton, who also testified in support of the bill, has been active in exposing the harm from residential treatment facilities and the transport services taking children to them, after being traumatized in such programs and transport as a teen.

To track the nation’s progress in eliminating unnecessary involuntary institutionalization and treatment, CCHR is calling for the national collection of data related to coerced psychiatric treatment.  CCHR continues to advocate for laws to ensure human rights in the mental health system.

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Maryland Governor Signs CCHR-Supported Legislation to Protect Troubled Youth from Abusive Transport to For-Profit Residential Behavioral Treatment Programs

Posted on May 12, 2025 by cchrstl

Maryland legislators took action after receiving reports of abuse during the largely unregulated transport of young people to residential behavioral treatment programs. The programs themselves have been the subject of investigations that found rampant physical, psychological, and sexual abuse of the children and teens residing there.

by  CCHR National Affairs Office

Maryland Governor Wes Moore has signed a bill intended to prevent the trauma inflicted by the use of blindfolds, zip ties, and leather straps on young people being transported to residential behavioral treatment programs by for-profit youth transport services.  The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) National Affairs Office provided testimony in support of the bill, which passed in both chambers of the Maryland legislature last month. 

Paris Hilton, who also provided testimony in support of the bill, has been active in exposing the harm from youth transport services after reportedly having suffered during a transport incident as a teen. Maryland Senate Bill 400, the Preventing Abduction in Youth Transport Act, prohibits the use of visual impairment, as with blindfolds and hoods, and mechanical restraint, as with handcuffs, belts, leather straps, and zip ties, of children during transport.

Physical restraint, including holds or other use of physical force to restrict a child’s freedom of movement, may only be used if there is a substantial likelihood of imminent serious physical harm to the child or others, and there are no less restrictive alternatives that would handle the situation.  Physical restraint is expressly prohibited as punishment or for the convenience of the transport company staff. 

Children being transported to residential behavioral treatment programs may not be picked up overnight between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., under provisions of the bill.

Now signed into law, the bill also enables the state attorney general to take legal action against companies found to have violated the law and enables those harmed during transport to sue for civil damages. 

The residential behavioral treatment programs for children referred to in the bill include wilderness and boot camp programs, behavioral modification schools, and other residential treatment facilities to which young people with behavioral or substance abuse problems may be sent by their parents.

Paris Hilton, who has been a strong advocate of reforms in the largely unregulated troubled teen industry, testified before the Maryland House Judiciary Committee about her experience at age 16 of being grabbed in the middle of the night by two large men who handcuffed her, shoved her in the back seat of a car, refused to answer her questions, and delivered her to a program where she says she endured further abuse.

Youth residential treatment programs have come under increasing scrutiny due to reports of rampant physical, psychological, and sexual abuse of youth in the programs. 

A 2007 investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found thousands of allegations of abuse, some of which resulted in death.  However, the GAO was unable to determine the scope of abuse, reporting that “GAO could not identify a more concrete number of allegations because it could not locate a single website, federal agency, or other entity that collects comprehensive nationwide data.”

More recently, a 2022 report from the National Disability Rights Network detailed extensive abuse of youth in for-profit residential treatment facilities that is “current, ongoing, and is not limited to any one corporation or geographic region.”

Yet, reports of abuse in youth residential treatment facilities and programs continue. “What is truly troubling is that, despite the mounting evidence of pervasive and systematic mistreatment, the troubled teen industry continues to perpetrate these harms, collect profits, and evade comprehensive oversight,” according to The Regulatory Review, a publication of the Penn Program on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania.

“The Maryland bill is an important first step in protecting emotionally stressed young people by reining in the traumatic experience of being forcibly transported to youth residential treatment programs,” said Anne Goedeke, president of the CCHR National Affairs Office.

“But much more needs to be done to protect troubled children and teens from harmful practices and abuse in programs that claim to be providing treatment for their mental health issues,” she added. “We need to uphold the human rights of these young people to dignity and safety and ensure they are getting real help.”

This is an updated version of the post originally published February 19, 2025 as “CCHR Supports Legislation to Protect Troubled Youth in Maryland from Abusive Transport to For-Profit Residential Behavioral Treatment Programs.”

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CCHR Calls on FDA to Update Antidepressant Prescribing Information for Increased Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death

Posted on May 5, 2025 by cchrstl

New research shows antidepressants substantially increase the risk of heart-related sudden death. Citizens Commission on Human Rights calls on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to update medication guides to reflect this risk.

by  CCHR National Affairs Office

A new study finds that antidepressant use substantially increases the risk of sudden cardiac death.  Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) calls on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to update antidepressants prescribing information and medication guides to fully disclose this increased risk.

At a recent scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology, researchers presented study findings showing that those who use antidepressants have an increased risk of sudden cardiac death, compared with the general population with no history of antidepressant use.  The risk varied with age and the length of time antidepressants were used.

The researchers examined all deaths in Denmark in 2010, identifying those whose death certificates or autopsy reports indicated sudden cardiac death.  They further identified those who filled a prescription for an antidepressant at least twice in a year during the 12-year period prior to 2010.

They found that compared with the general population not using antidepressants, those using antidepressants for 1 to 5 years increased their risk of cardiac sudden death by 56%.  Those using the drugs for 6 years or more had a 2.2 times greater risk.

“Exposure time to antidepressants was associated with a higher risk of sudden cardiac death, and linked to how long the person had been exposed to antidepressants,” according to study co-author Dr. Jasmin Mujkanovic at Rigshospitlet Hjertecentret in Copenhagen, as quoted in a European Society of Cardiology press release.

“Those exposed [to antidepressants] for 6 years or more were at even more increased risk than those exposed for 1 to 5 years, when compared with people unexposed to antidepressants in the general population,” he continued. 

Among 30- to 39-year-olds, those who used antidepressants for 1-5 years had a three times greater risk of sudden cardiac death than non-users in the general population, a risk that rose to five times higher at 6 or more years of use.

For 50- to 59-year-olds, antidepressant use for 1 to 5 years doubled their risk of sudden cardiac death, while 6 or more years of use had a four times higher risk, compared with non-users in the general population.

Only 18- to 29-year-olds had no statistically significant association with a higher risk of sudden cardiac death.  The study was also published in Heart, the journal of the British Cardiovascular Society.

Another recent study investigated the effect of depression and antidepressants on seven cardiovascular conditions: arrhythmia, atrial fibrillation (AFib), coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, heart failure, stroke, and cardiovascular diseases as a group.

They found that the use of antidepressants increased the risk of atrial fibrillation and stroke by 44% each; arrhythmias by 28%; coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, and heart failure by 16% each; and overall cardiovascular disease by 35%.  They concluded that the association of depression with these cardiovascular diseases is primarily accounted for by depressed patients’ use of antidepressants, not from depression itself.

“We call on the FDA to require antidepressant manufacturers to update the information provided to prescribers and patients to warn of the potential risks of sudden cardiac death and other life-threatening cardiovascular events from the use of these drugs,” said Anne Goedeke, president of the CCHR National Affairs Office.  “Consumers have a right to know the full extent of the potential dangers of antidepressants.”

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of an antidepressant or other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms or other complications.

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