White Paper on Improving Psychiatric Patient Outcomes

Posted on July 3, 2023 by cchrstl

Reference:
WHITE PAPER on Improving Patient Outcomes, Addressing Treatment Caused Trauma & Injuries, Enhancing Patient Rights, and Grievance Procedures for the Report Required by § 36 of CH 41 SLA 2022 (HB172)
by James B. (Jim) Gottstein, Esq.; Faith Myers; Susan Musante, LPCC; David Cohen, PhD; Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD; David Healy, MD; The International Society for Ethical Psychology & Psychiatry
April 2023, Addenda May 2023
Anchorage, Alaska

[Note: Full references and citations are provided in the original White Paper.]

On July 15, 2022, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy signed HB172 into law which requires the Department of Health, Department of Family and Community Services, and the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority to report on, among other things, improving psychiatric patient outcomes, institutional trauma, enhancing patient rights, the grievance process, and patient injuries.

The Legislation was enacted to comply with a settlement over a successful lawsuit brought against the State of Alaska for illegally confining people for extended periods of time in correctional facilities and emergency rooms awaiting admission to the Alaska Psychiatric Institute for court ordered psychiatric evaluations.

This White Paper provides input for the required Report to the Legislature, focusing on improving patient outcomes, enhancing patient rights, having an effective and legitimate grievance process, and addressing patient injuries and treatment-caused trauma.

Executive Summary of the White Paper

If the fundamental purpose of the mental health system is to improve the lives of psychiatric patients it is failing miserably. That the State does not keep track of institutional trauma and patient complaints, and has no legitimate grievance process are illustrations of the lack of commitment to improving patients’ lives.

The mental health system’s standard treatments are counterproductive and harmful, and often forced on unwilling patients. The overreliance on psychiatric drugs is reducing the recovery rate of people diagnosed with serious mental illness and reducing their life spans. Psychiatric incarceration, euphemistically called “involuntary commitment,” is similarly counterproductive and harmful, adding to patients’ trauma and massively associated with suicides. Harmful psychiatric interventions are being imposed on people by judges in proceedings where the facts about treatments and their harms are not being presented by appointed counsel, rendering the proceedings shams.

Court proceedings to psychiatrically incarcerate people on the grounds it is necessary to protect other people from harm should be eliminated; predictions of violence are not accurate and no one else besides someone who receives a psychiatric diagnosis is incarcerated for something they might do in the future. Court proceedings to psychiatrically drug people against their will on the grounds it is in their best interest should be eliminated. They are not in people’s best interest if unwanted. “If it is not voluntary it is not treatment.” If such proceedings are nonetheless held, they should be conducted in a legitimate manner.

The most important elements for improving patients’ lives are People, Place and Purpose. People—even psychiatric patients—need to have a safe place to live (Place), relationships (People), and to have activity that is meaningful to them, usually school or work (Purpose). People need to be given hope these are possible. Voluntary approaches that improve people’s lives should be made available instead of the currently prevailing counterproductive and harmful psychiatric drugs for everyone, forever regime often forced on people. The White Paper lists at least 8 successful non-drug treatment programs that already exist for people experiencing mental distress. Brutal incarceration and coercive psychiatry is not the only option.

By implementing these approaches, Alaska’s mental health system can improve the recovery rate. As bad as it is for adults, the psychiatric incarceration and psychiatric drugging of children and youth is even more tragic and should be stopped. Instead, children and youth should be helped to manage their emotions and become successful, and their parents should be given support and assistance to achieve this.

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Psychiatrists at Annual Conference Warned That Antidepressants They Prescribe Can Deaden Patients’ Emotions

Posted on June 26, 2023 by cchrstl

New study confirms patients’ common complaints of antidepressants deadening their emotions and harming their sex life.

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, June 15, 2023 — A new study presented at the annual conference of the American Psychiatric Association informed psychiatrists that the emotional blunting caused by the antidepressants they prescribe is a significant and under-recognized side effect patients may suffer.

The current study reviewed 25 prior studies related to the problem of antidepressant-induced emotional blunting, described as “a persistent diminution in both positive and negative feelings,” which the patients differentiated as side effects of the drugs rather than symptoms of their depression.

The researchers concluded that “emotional blunting was a significant patient-reported concern with antidepressants.” That dulling of emotions could also be experienced as a change in personality or as not feeling like oneself.

A separate study earlier this year also found that participants given a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant experienced a reduction in positive emotions, along with a significant increase in sexual problems that the researchers suggested could be due to the reduced emotional pleasure.

Sexual dysfunction is reportedly experienced by many patients on antidepressants. Half of the antidepressant users who responded to a recent survey reported experiencing sexual problems they did not have before taking the drugs – problems that can strain relationships and lead to a worsening of the depression for which the drugs are being prescribed.

These findings add new credibility to patients’ common complaints of antidepressants deadening their emotions and sex life.

Worse still, the sexual disability can persist indefinitely, even after antidepressants are discontinued.  The condition, referred to as post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, has no definitive treatment, a fact many patients were not made aware of by their prescribers before starting antidepressants.

A key rationale for prescribing antidepressants in the first place – to fix a chemical balance in the brain – was recently found to be without scientific merit. Researchers conducted a comprehensive review of the research that had looked into whether a lack of the brain chemical serotonin causes depression and concluded there was no convincing evidence to support the theory.

“The serotonin theory of depression has been one of the most influential and extensively researched biological theories of the origins of depression,” wrote the study’s lead author, Joanne Moncrieff. “Our study shows that this view is not supported by scientific evidence. It also calls into question the basis for the use of antidepressants.”

Also challenging the prescribing of antidepressants are the results of a study which found that taking antidepressants led to worse depression symptoms for patients years later. Patients who used antidepressants at any time during the 30-year period of the study had an 81% greater chance of experiencing more severe depression symptoms at the end of the period.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) continues to raise public awareness of the risks of serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, so that consumers and their physicians can make fully informed decisions about starting or stopping the drugs.

CCHR also recommends a complete physical examination with lab tests, nutritional and allergy screenings, and a review of all current medications to identify any physical causes of depression or other unwanted mental and emotional symptoms, which might otherwise be misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated as a psychiatric disorder.

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.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuses and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.

Anne Goedeke
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office
202-349-9267

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PTSD Awareness Month

Posted on June 19, 2023 by cchrstl

Psychiatric Drugs Prescribed for PTSD Linked to Stubbornly High Rates of Veteran Suicides

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, June 8, 2023/ — During PTSD Awareness Month, attention turns to the aftermath of traumatic events, which have always been part of the human experience. But so-called post-traumatic stress disorder is being applied more broadly these days to a wide range of stressful events, turning them into psychiatric disorders for which the prescription is typically mind-altering psychotropic drugs – drugs which carry the risk of suicidal thoughts and actions. This risk is especially relevant to former service members, in light of the stubbornly high rates of veteran suicides.

The rate of suicides by former service members is a matter of some debate. The 2022 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report, issued by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), reported an average of 17 veteran suicides per day during 2020, the most recent year for which national death certificate data is available. The rate of veteran suicides per 100,000 population was 57% higher than the rate of non-veteran adult suicides.

The VA’s suicide rate per day has been challenged in a study underway by a veteran suicide prevention organization, America’s Warrior Partnership, which is using state mortality data gathered by the University of Alabama and analyzed at Duke University in coordination with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). So far, five years of death data from eight states has been analyzed, with corrections made to the states’ data reporting. An interim report on the study says that if these eight states are representative of the rest of the nation, the veteran suicide rate would be at least 44 per day, which is 2.4 times higher than the VA’s reported rate.

Whatever the rate, it is completely unacceptable. The VA further reported that 40% of the suicides were committed by veterans who had used the VA health care system in the year prior to their death. This reflects a 43% increase in suicides by VA health services users since 2005.

What accounts for this continuing high number of suicides, especially among veterans who utilized VA health services?

In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in 2021 by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR), the Veterans Health Administration revealed that in 2019, 4.2 million veterans were taking psychiatric drugs, including antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, antianxiety drugs, and mood stabilizers. These drugs have the known side effects of suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts, and completed suicides – adverse events reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in drug studies and by consumers.

Of the 4.2 million former service members prescribed psychiatric drugs, 1.75 million (41%) of them were prescribed antidepressants, which is typical treatment for PTSD, as well as depression. The VA website’s information on PTSD lists antidepressants as the only medications for treatment.

The FDA has required a black box warning, its most stringent warning, on antidepressant labels to alert users to the increased risk of suicidal thoughts and actions in those under the age of 25, an age range that includes many of active service members and veterans who have taken their own lives.

CCHR has long advocated for the warning to be expanded to include all adults, based on empirical evidence. Researchers who conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials in which SSRI and SNRI antidepressants were given to healthy adult volunteers with no signs of depression found that antidepressants double the risk of suicidality and violence.

Another study re-analyzed data submitted to the FDA for approval of antidepressants and found that the rate of suicide attempts in drug trials was about 2.5 times higher in patients using antidepressants as compared to those taking placebos.

The prescriptions for psychiatric drugs for military personnel soared from 2005 to 2011, increasing sevenfold over the period, according to the DOD – more than 30 times the rate among the civilian population. Already by 2013, the Military Times reported that one in six American service members was taking at least one psychiatric drug. At the same time, military suicides were rising dramatically.

And the suicides continue. Brown University’s Costs of War Project reported that an estimated 30,177 active-duty service members and war veterans of the post 9/11 wars have died by suicide, more than four times as many as the 7,057 killed in military operations. “The suicide rate of veterans overall and adjusted for age and sex is 1.5 times that of the general population,” according to the report. “Moreover, the current suicide rate of 45.9 [per 100,000 population] among veterans [ages] 18-34 is about 2.5 times the suicide rate of that of the adjusted general population (18 per 100,000).”

To address the risks of psychiatric drugs as mental health treatment given to our active-duty military and veterans, CCHR produced its acclaimed documentary, Hidden Enemy: Inside Psychiatry’s Covert Agenda. It features interviews with more than 80 experts, soldiers, and veterans and presents evidence linking the rising number of psychiatric drug prescriptions with military suicides and sudden deaths.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights continues to raise public awareness of the risks of serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, so that consumers and their physicians can make fully informed decisions about starting or stopping the drugs. CCHR supports safe and science-based non-drug approaches to mental health.

CCHR recommends a complete physical examination with lab tests, nutritional and allergy screenings, and a review of all current medications to identify any physical causes of depression or other unwanted mental and emotional symptoms, which might otherwise be misdiagnosed as a psychiatric disorder and incorrectly treated.

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

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuse and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.

Anne Goedeke
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

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Primary Care Doctors Advised Not to Prescribe Antidepressants to Patients on First Visit for Mild to Moderate Depression

Posted on June 5, 2023 by cchrstl

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, May 25, 2023 — Researchers are advising primary care doctors not to prescribe antidepressants to patients with mild to moderate depression on their first visit because of the drugs’ limited effectiveness and risks of significant side effects. Their conclusion, based on reviews of the available evidence on antidepressants, was published in World Psychiatry, the journal of the World Psychiatric Association.

Noting that most depressed patients in primary care settings have mild to moderate depression, the researchers cite recent research that found the benefit of antidepressants for such patients is so small that it may not be clinically significant. Instead, the researchers suggest non-drug approaches for these patients.

“Antidepressants should not be prescribed at the first visit if the patient has mild to moderate depression, because they have a limited efficacy and may have significant side effects,” according to lead author Bruce Arroll, professor in the Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Even for a first visit to primary care by severely depressed patients, antidepressants may not be the best treatment, the researchers say. “The best strategy may be to reframe some of the negative cognitions of the patients and advise physical activity,” writes Arroll, with follow-up to track the patients’ results.

This advice is similar to guidance issued in 2021 by the organization that develops standards for health care practices in England. The London-based National Institute for Health and Care Excellence advised doctors not to routinely prescribe antidepressants as first-line treatment for people with less severe depression, but to offer a variety of non-drug treatment options and to respect the patients’ right to decline treatment.

Recent studies have found little, if any, benefit to antidepressants over placebos. Researchers led by Marc B. Stone of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research combined the results of 232 randomized controlled trials reported to the FDA from 1979 to 2016 that compared the effect of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants with placebos for patients with depression. Publishing their report in 2022 in the British Medical Journal, the researchers found that a benefit from antidepressants over placebos was limited to just 15% of the patients, while the other 85% experienced no benefit as compared to placebos. The placebo effect was powerful, with roughly two-thirds of the depressed patients given placebos getting better.

Another 2022 study found no clinically significant difference in measures of depression symptoms between adults treated with antidepressants and those taking placebos, whether over a shorter or longer time frame and regardless of the depression severity of the study participants.

Some 45 million Americans are currently taking one or more antidepressants, including 5.7 million children and young adults under the age of 25, for whom the FDA requires a warning on the drug’s prescribing information of the increased risk of suicidal thoughts and actions.

Other adverse effects of antidepressants include weight gain, nausea, insomnia, agitation, emotional blunting and sexual dysfunction. One recent study found that half of antidepressant users experience sexual problems that can strain their relationships and lead to a worsening of their depression.  In a survey of antidepressant users, 44% of respondents reported the drugs negatively impacted their sex lives, 27% their ability to work or study, and 21% their relationships with friends or family.

Those who used antidepressants any time during the 30-year period of another recent study had an 81% greater chance of having more severe depression symptoms at the end of the study.

Antidepressants may be prescribed to prevent suicides, but an examination of coroner inquests in which the decedents used antidepressants revealed that about half of the deaths were determined to be suicides.  One in eight of the deaths involved an overdose of antidepressants.

Discontinuing antidepressants can bring on serious symptoms during withdrawal, including electric shock-like sensations (“brain zaps” and “body zaps”), muscle spasms and tremors, hallucinations, confusion, irritability, and mania. One study found that more than half (56%) of people attempting to come off antidepressants experience withdrawal symptoms, with nearly half (46%) of them describing those symptoms as severe, and the symptoms can last for weeks or months.

More fundamentally, a landmark 2022 study questioned the prescribing of antidepressants at all, after finding the common reason for taking them – to correct a chemical imbalance in the brain – had no scientific basis. The study investigated whether evidence supported the theory that a low level of the brain chemical serotonin causes depression.

“The serotonin theory of depression has been one of the most influential and extensively researched biological theories of the origins of depression,” the researchers wrote. “Our study shows that this view is not supported by scientific evidence. It also calls into question the basis for the use 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.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) continues to raise public awareness of the risks of serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, so that consumers and their physicians can make fully informed decisions about starting or stopping the drugs. CCHR supports safe and science-based non-drug approaches to mental health.

CCHR also recommends a complete physical examination with lab tests, nutritional and allergy screenings, and a review of all current medications to identify any physical causes of depression or other unwanted mental and behavioral symptoms, which might otherwise be misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated as a psychiatric disorder.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuse and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.

Anne Goedeke
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

1701 20th St. NW

Washington, DC 20009

(202) 349-9267

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What Is Your Emotional Intelligence?

Posted on May 31, 2023 by cchrstl

We notice continuing discussions in social media about “emotional intelligence”, although with few successful attempts to actually nail it down.

It used to simply be called “maturity.” Attempts by psychiatry and psychology to dissect it make it more complicated and subject to argument about what it really is. We thought we’d like to weigh in on the discussion, and relate it to psychiatric fraud and abuse.

Some definitions:
[These are not all the possible definitions, but are useful ones.]

Emotional: Relating to a state of feelings or sensations created or experienced by an individual or a body; the physical, mental and spiritual state of an individual manifested as a gradient scale of an individual’s state of being.
[From Latin emov?re to remove, displace, from e– + mov?re to move.]

Intelligence: The ability to perceive, pose and resolve problems; the ability to recognize differences, similarities and identities, and evaluate relative importances.
[From Latin intellegere, to understand.]

Maturity: Relating to a condition of full growth or development; behaving in a sensible way; well-balanced in personality and emotional behavior.
[From Latin maturus, ripe.]

We take the term “Emotional Intelligence” to mean the ability to use one’s emotions intelligently and appropriately in different situations.

Some psychiatrists and psychologists relate emotional intelligence to mental health disorders. Witness the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) which describes numerous fraudulent diagnoses for which they can prescribe any number of harmful, mind-altering psychiatric drugs. [The purpose of which is to be able to bill insurance for counseling or drugs for any of these diagnoses.] Here are some of those absurd DSM diagnoses:

— Adjustment disorder, With mixed disturbance of emotions and conduct
— High expressed emotion level within family
— Borderline intellectual functioning
— Intellectual disability (intellectual developmental disorder)
— Disinhibited social engagement disorder

This over-complication of an essentially simple concept leads to endless speculation, the wasted funds for hundreds of research papers, and no end of descriptions about its components and what to do about it.

There is one very simple way to learn to be more emotionally intelligent — by learning to identify the emotions one is feeling as well as understanding them. You won’t learn this, however, from a psychiatrist.

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FDA Updates Warning on Stimulants Prescribed for ADHD, Now Lists Risks of Misuse, Addiction, Diversion and Overdose

Posted on May 22, 2023 by cchrstl

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, May 18, 2023 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is requiring new warnings in the prescribing information for stimulant drugs used to treat so-called attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) “to address continuing concerns of misuse, abuse, addiction, and overdose of the prescription drugs,” according to the FDA’s statement on the change. The “boxed warning” being updated is the most prominent warning the FDA can require for drugs.

Stimulants commonly prescribed for ADHD that will now carry the elevated warning include Adderall, Concerta, Dexedrine, and Ritalin. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) classifies these drugs as Schedule II controlled substances – the same drug classification as for cocaine, morphine, oxycodone, and fentanyl. The DEA warns that use of stimulant drugs can lead to “severe psychological or physical dependence” and that “these drugs are also considered dangerous.” Diversion of the drugs is illegal.

In explaining its reason for the heightened warning, the FDA states, “The current prescribing information for some prescription stimulants does not provide up to date warnings about the harms of misuse and abuse, and particularly that most individuals who misuse prescription stimulants get their drugs from other family members or peers.”

Diversion of prescribed stimulant drugs from patients to others is a longstanding problem, particularly among children and young adults. Research has found that a range of 16% to 29% of students from grade school through college who have stimulant prescriptions are asked to give, sell, or trade their medications.

The FDA’s new warning for stimulants reads, in part: “WARNING: ABUSE, MISUSE, AND ADDICTION. [Name of drug] has a high potential for abuse and misuse, which can lead to the development of a substance use disorder, including addiction. Misuse and abuse of CNS [central nervous system] stimulants, including [Name of drug], can result in overdose and death.”

The latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that overdose deaths from stimulant drugs have tripled from 10,255 deaths in 2017 to 32,478 in 2022. This increase is occurring in the context of a national overdose crisis, in which stimulants are increasingly involved, according to the CDC.

The FDA’s communication lists some of the serious side effects of stimulant drugs that require emergency treatment, including fast heart rate, fast breathing, increased blood pressure, restlessness, tremors, loss of coordination, nausea and vomiting, aggressive behavior, panic, confusion, and hallucinations. Stimulants are also linked to stunted growth in children.

Some 9.6 million Americans are prescribed stimulant drugs for so-called ADHD. However, there is no objective, scientific basis for “diagnoses” of mental disorders, as acknowledged by Thomas Insel, M.D., former director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), in his blog on the NIMH website in 2013. This means it is far too easy to “diagnose” ADHD.

The late psychologist Keith Conners conducted the first formal trials on the now-widely prescribed ADHD stimulant methylphenidate, commonly sold under the brand names Ritalin and Concerta. He later realized that ADHD diagnoses were out of control and called ADHD misdiagnoses “a national disaster of dangerous proportions.”

One in three Americans taking ADHD drugs is under the age of 18, but research has raised concerns over prescribing stimulants to children. Beyond the risks of serious adverse effects, a recent study found no convincing evidence of any long-term benefit to children from treatment for ADHD with stimulant drugs.

Another recent study found that children started on ADHD treatment with the stimulant methylphenidate were 18 times more likely to experience depression than before starting, and when the drug was discontinued, the higher risk dropped back to starting levels. [1]

Children who were first prescribed methylphenidate between the ages of 6 and 8 and continued to take the drugs had a 50% higher risk of being prescribed antidepressants for depression during their teen years, another study found. [2]

CCHR continues to raise public awareness of the risks of serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms from psychostimulants and other psychiatric drugs, so consumers and their physicians can make fully informed decisions about starting or stopping the drugs. CCHR supports safe and science-based non-drug approaches to mental health.

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

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuse and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.

[1] https://www.cpn.or.kr/journal/view.html?volume=20&number=2&spage=320#B19
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30828744/

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More About Shock Therapy

Posted on May 15, 2023 by cchrstl

The barbaric and shameful psychiatric use of shock treatments unfortunately has a lengthy history. By shock we mean such atrocities as electrotherapy (various methods of shocking body parts with electricity), temperature therapy (shocking with hot or cold temperatures), insulin shock therapy, cardiazol (metrazol) shock therapy (a drug that induces seizures), deep brain stimulation, lobotomy (hacking off connections in the brain), deep sleep (narcosis), and of course the “modern” way of inducing seizures with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

The point is that these psychiatric treatments emphasize the aspect of shock.

Fraudulent Psychiatric Diagnosis

There is no evidence of any kind that there is anything called a mental illness as described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The whole of psychiatry is based on a wrong conclusion. Psychiatry looks only at a person’s stimulus-response behavior, and assumes that is all there is to a human being.

Why Shock Therapy?

Psychiatry resorted to such savage and bestial treatments as these various shock therapies because they were up against people who apparently would not be helped, and they had (and still have) no clue about how to actually help them — about how to gradiently replace stimulus-response behavior with self-determined behavior.

Someone with troubles is already at a lower level of awareness. Pain is then what they are most aware and certain of. The psychiatrist is there to deliver more pain in the mistaken idea that this will cause the insane to be less insane. However, the certainty and awareness of pain which is delivered by the impact of shock is a non-self-determined certainty. Certainty delivered by force, pain, blows and shock eventually brings about only unconsciousness and the certainty of unawareness.

Psychiatry is not particularly interested in increasing awareness; they would rather blunt someone’s awareness by shock in a misguided attempt to make a person less aware of their surroundings, their pain and troubles.

Shock does not and never can cause an improvement in mental health, since it produces only the reduction of awareness.

The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness” and stigmatize unwanted stimulus-response behavior as “disease,” using the psychiatric billing bible the DSM as their justification. The bottom line is that all psychiatric “treatments” are harmful.

Psychiatrists will tell you that brain damage itself is what causes an apparent improvement in depression symptoms. In fact, in 1942 American psychiatrist Abraham Myerson said: “The reduction of intelligence is an important factor in the curative process. The fact is that some of the very best cures that one gets are in those individuals whom one reduces almost to amentia [feeble-mindedness]”.

Need we really spell out for you that this is contrary to any healing or beneficial effect at all?

What You Can Do

Contact your local, state and federal officials and representatives and urge them to Ban ECT and other forms of psychiatric shock abuse.

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Tolerance and Intolerance in Psychiatry

Posted on May 8, 2023 by cchrstl

Our reference here is the book Tolerance – The Liberation of Mankind, by Hendrik Willem van Loon, originally published in 1925. The volume we have was independently published on June 12, 2021, by an unnamed source. As the book says, it is “The history of Tolerance (or the lack thereof) in the history of man as described by one of the best popular historians of all time.”

The book introduces the word by saying, “I refer to the Encyclopedia Britannica. There on page 1052 of volume XXVI stands written: ‘Tolerance (from Latin tolerare — to endure): – The allowance of freedom of action or judgment to other people, the patient and unprejudiced endurance of dissent from one’s own or the generally received course or view.'”

Some additional dictionary definitions are:
— capacity to endure pain, hardship, harm, or unpleasantness
— a permissive attitude toward beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own
— the allowable deviation from a standard
— the diminished effect of a drug over time with its regular use.

One colloquial phrase representing tolerance is “live and let live.”

The book is basically a history of the world from the viewpoints of tolerance and intolerance. (Mostly intolerance, as the case may be.)

Tolerance and Racism

In the U.S., one generally thinks of intolerance as black/white racism or religious intolerance, with anti-semitism rising rapidly alongside. It isn’t necessarily the same in other countries or times. For example, in Belgium intolerance also exists between white Flemish speakers and white French speakers.

Tolerance and Psychiatry

It should be plain to see that psychiatry cannot tolerate any deviance from what they imagine is normal behavior, and seeks to compulsively and coercively “treat” it. Since psychiatry has never been able to understand, control or successfully cure such deviance, their efforts lead to continual failure.

When we speak of “coercive psychiatry” we mean that psychiatry is used as a means of social control against which one has no recourse and cannot fight back, which is destructive of one’s self-determinism, causing distrust instead of faith. Psychiatry intends to substitute their own vision of “normal” for any individual beliefs one may hold; which fits the definition of intolerance pretty closely.

The literature abounds with scholarly articles about tolerance and mental health, often involving exhortations to accept others’ differences. This corresponds with psychiatry’s insistence that one must adapt to one’s environment rather than control one’s environment.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders revision 5 (DSM-5) deals with tolerance only in the sense of Substance Use Disorders, when an individual requires increasingly higher doses of a substance to achieve the desired effect, or the usual dose has a reduced effect. Such tolerance as one criteria for a Substance Use Disorder does not apply in the case of a prescription drug used in the context of appropriate medical treatment (i.e. “generally accepted practices”).

One example of psychiatry dealing with tolerance/intolerance in patients is called the “Intolerance of Uncertainty;” the conjecture is that such individuals tend to be less tolerant of ambiguity, uncertainty, and unpredictability in their lives, and that this is a mental disorder. These individuals can then be labeled with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (or any one of several other diagnoses from the DSM) and prescribed harmful psychiatric drugs to suppress their anxiety. In particular, we noticed a number of psychiatric research articles examining this issue in relation to COVID-19, pregnancy, education, stress and burnout, autism, pain, religion, depression, vaccination, … in other words, pretty much in all areas of life.

The Root of Intolerance

Whenever there is so much unresolved discussion over a topic, we can be sure that there is a general lack of understanding about it. There is certainly an excessively long historical preoccupation with intolerance. Perhaps one can observe that intolerance of uncertainty is not really a psychiatric condition to be treated with drugs, but an expression of a human aberration which should be treated by increasing one’s ability to observe and confront different, unknown, confusing, or uncomfortable conditions.

This basic characteristic about tolerance is the ability to tolerate views; that is, the ability to look, to know by looking. Thus intolerance is an inability to tolerate views, viewpoints, or looking; it’s a decision to refuse to observe.

Intolerance as discussed in the cited Tolerance book is essentially concerned with a dismissive, antagonistic or hostile attitude toward others’ different beliefs, leading toward repeated attempts to suppress or eliminate those other beliefs. These beliefs run the gamut from political, economic, religious, racist, to just plain cussedness; and the political and economic conditions often seem to be behind a lot of the intolerance.

While many have perished for their contrary beliefs, we observe that there is a general failure to permanently stamp these out. We make no judgments here about the truth or falsity of any particular beliefs.

Consider what happens when one tries to control another person or situation, but fails to do so. One then attempts to justify one’s failure. One way to justify such a failure is to attack the other and make less of them. One way to attack another is to say oneself is right and they are wrong.

Thus we see a definite relation between tolerance/intolerance and the human condition which causes an individual to make oneself right by making another wrong.

The book reaches its final conclusion about tolerance by saying that “fear … is at the bottom of all intolerance.” This can be fear of another’s politics, economics, religion, race, or just plain fear of difference. It’s actually an inability to recognize similarities, and observing (and misunderstanding) only differences. Both sanity and intelligence are intimately related to one’s ability to recognize differences, similarities and identities.

How to Overcome Intolerance

The solution to tolerance should be fairly obvious: rehabilitate and enhance one’s ability to observe and recognize differences, similarities and identities. Find out how to identify what makes something logical or illogical by taking this short, free online course: “The Investigations Course“. We trust you understand that psychiatric labels install fear of behavior; and that psychiatric drugs or other treatments can only suppress the fear and not eliminate it.

It should also be obvious that psychiatry is not your friend when it comes to tolerance. Contact your local, state and federal officials and representatives and urge them to stop funding psychiatry.

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Historical Underpinnings of Psychiatric Medical Training

Posted on May 1, 2023 by cchrstl

The evolution of mental healing from a spiritual undertaking to a brain and chemical based atrocity follows a number of historical paths.

One such path was carved out by “oil baron John D. Rockefeller’s ‘strategic philanthropy’ of using the Flexner Report and his funding of Johns Hopkins University to mold medical training into a model by which he could multiply his market,” since 80 percent of pharmaceuticals are oil-based.

[See page 193 in The Hidden Horrors of Psychiatry, C.F. Van Der Horst, 2022 Per Veritatem Vis Foundation.]

The Flexner Report of 1910 by Abraham Flexner contained recommendations on the restructuring of medical education and the establishment of the biomedical model as the gold standard of medical training.

[Medical Education in the United States and Canada, July 8, 1910, Science magazine. See the National Lirarary of Medicine analysis here.]

The Report “contained recommendations requiring that medical educational institutions be funded by the big Foundations. It gave oil baron John D. Rockefeller the opportunity to steer medical education in such a way that the largely petroleum-based pharmaceuticals would play a central role and alternative medicine such as homeopathy would be barred. In writing the report, Abraham Flexner was directly coached by two Rockefeller Foundation employees.”
[See additional details in Deadly Lies: How Doctors and Patients Are Deceived, by C.F. van der Horst, 2023, Per Veritatem Vis Foundation.]

Today, the psychopharmaceutical marketing machine shamelessly pushes psychiatric drugs in spite of their known failures, leading the late Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus Dr. Thomas Szasz to say, “Psychiatry is probably the single most destructive force that has affected society within the last 60 years.”

Psychiatrists tell us that the way to fix unwanted behavior is by altering brain chemistry with a pill — the legacy of the Flexner Report.

But unlike a mainstream medical drug like insulin, psychotropic medications have no measurable target illness to correct, and can upset the very delicate balance of chemical processes the body needs to run smoothly.

Nevertheless, psychiatrists and drug companies have used these drugs to create a huge and lucrative market niche.

And they’ve done this by naming more and more unwanted behaviors as “medical disorders” requiring psychiatric medication.

How did psychotropic drugs, with no target illness, no known curative powers and a long and extensive list of side effects, become the go?to treatment for every kind of psychological distress?

And how did the psychiatrists espousing these drugs come to dominate the field of mental treatment?

Find out by watching the Citizens Commission on Human Rights® (CCHR) Documentary “The Marketing of Madness – Are We All Insane?“

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Fraud in the Psychiatric Industry

Posted on April 10, 2023 by cchrstl

The March 31-April 6, 2023 St. Louis Business Journal “Highest-Paid St. Louis Occupations” list (on page 47) shows Psychiatrists having the second-highest Mean Annual Wage ($307,910) and Mean Hourly Wage ($148.04), with 170 estimated local psychiatrists.

Unfortunately, psychiatry’s baseless promises to improve mental health are promises that have repeatedly failed to deliver positive results, encouraging up to $20 billion a year lost in the U.S. due to fraudulent practices in the mental health sector.

Government funding, without accountability for successful patient outcomes, has enabled massive financial fraud, waste and patient harm from psychiatrists and psychiatric facilities.

Greater oversight could help reduce government waste and isolate and eradicate harmful practices and introduce patient protections so that lives could be saved.

Amid a rise in the use of telehealth for mental healthcare, fraud, and the consequent enforcement activities are increasing. More than 20 states report fraud, waste, and abuse as a “concern” with respect to telehealth services used to provide behavioral healthcare, according to information collected by the U.S. Office of Inspector General. But even greater oversight is needed and stronger penalties for violations.

Fraud- or theft-related crimes account for the second largest part of all the crimes conducted in the mental health industry in the U.S.

No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives and that they can be mentally unstable. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental health healing methods which improve and strengthen individuals by restoring them to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, responsibility, and well-being.

Contact your local, state and federal officials and urge them to stop funding harmful and fraudulent psychiatric practices; and urge them to provide greater oversight and stronger penalties for violations to help curb psychiatric fraud.

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