Citizens Commission on Human Rights of St. Louis

“A federal judge on Wednesday June 29 refused to order prison officials to stop forcibly medicating Arizona shooting suspect Jared Loughner with anti-psychotic drugs.

“U.S. District Judge Larry Burns rejected a request by defense attorneys for Loughner, 22, to halt the procedure at a federal prisoners’ hospital in Missouri.

“Last month Loughner was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial on charges he killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, during a January 8 shooting in Tucson, Arizona.

“His defense team filed an emergency petition arguing the U.S. Bureau of Prisons had decided, without the permission of the court, to “involuntarily and forcibly medicate him on the grounds that he is a danger to others.”

“In response, prosecutors said that after Loughner had declined to take medication, the Bureau of Prisons determined at an administrative hearing that he should be involuntarily medicated.”

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/29/us-shooting-loughner-medication-idUSTRE75S85P20110629]

Without becoming involved in the legal case for or against Loughner, one can still remark on the subject of involuntary commitment and enforced drugging.

Knowing what we know about psychiatric treatment and psychiatric drugs [and if you are not familiar with the truth about this, we recommend you review the material on our web site,] we cannot help but observe and decry the inhumanity of involuntary commitment and enforced drugging.

Can this really happen in America today? Can this happen in a country where even criminals are set free if they are not given their rights, where the strongest Constitution in man’s history guarantees the individual his liberties? It not only can, but it does. The fact is, every 1¼ minutes, someone in the U.S. becomes the next victim of involuntary incarceration in a psychiatric hospital. And there’s nothing they can do about it.

While involuntary commitment laws enrich the psychiatric industry, they not only deprive individuals of their freedom of choice, but milk millions of health insurance dollars annually from private, state, national and military health plans. And while psychiatrists and psychiatric hospitals are today being investigated nationally and in state hearings for insurance fraud, mistreatment of patients, sexual violations and other crimes, the crux of their power—involuntary commitment laws—receives no focused attention.

The undeniable fact is that basic human rights granted even to killers or terrorists are denied people labeled mentally disordered. Restraints, imprisonment and other violations of civil liberties are the least people have to fear from involuntary admission into psychiatric institutions. A far worse fate is treatment, especially enforced drugging.

The common thread of all these procedures is the incapacitation in some manner of the individual. And when one considers that most psychiatric cases address those who indulge in behavior not approved of by others, this form of control becomes a logical and even acceptable goal—to those who seek such control.

The fact that these actions are couched in such Orwellian doublespeak as “for his own good,” “to prevent him from committing harm,” etc., is unfortunate, for it obfuscates this evil intention.

The dangerous person who is violent must be dealt with independent of psychiatrists. In his book, The Therapeutic State, Dr. Thomas Szasz wrote, “To be sure some people are dangerous. We in America—especially if we live in the big cities—need hardly be reminded of this painful fact. But in American law, dangerousness is not supposed to be an abstract psychological condition attributed to a person; instead, it is supposed to be an inference drawn from the fact that a person has committed a violent act that is illegal, has been charged with it, tried for it, and found guilty of it. In which case, he should be punished, not ‘treated’—in a jail, not in a hospital.”

For more information about this sorry state of affairs, download and read the CCHR information letter, “Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment – A Crack In The Door Of Constitutional Freedoms.”

The Illusions of Psychiatry

by Marcia Angell in the New York Review of Books

This is a seriously great article exposing all the inner workings of psychiatry’s billing bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), including the complete lack of medical legitimacy for psychiatric diagnoses, the birth of the psychiatric-pharmaceutical alliance to push DSM disorders off on an unsuspecting public, and the funding behind psychiatrists and their front groups pushing the brain based “disease” model which they all know is bogus.

“Unlike the conditions treated in most other branches of medicine, there are no objective signs or tests for mental illness—no lab data or MRI findings—and the boundaries between normal and abnormal are often unclear. That makes it possible to expand diagnostic boundaries or even create new diagnoses, in ways that would be impossible, say, in a field like cardiology. And drug companies have every interest in inducing psychiatrists to do just that.”

Read the full article here:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jul/14/illusions-of-psychiatry/

Judy Clarke, defense attorney for the Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner, wrote in a court filing the first week of June that giving Loughner psychiatric drugs could have “serious and possibly permanent side effects.” [Quote from the Nevada Missouri Herald-Tribune, June 11, 2011]

While we agree with this statement about the side effects of psychiatric drugs, we also know that Thomas Szasz in his book, The Myth of Mental Illness, said, “The introduction of psychiatric considerations into the administration of the criminal law – for example, the insanity plea and verdict, diagnoses of mental incompetence to stand trial, and so forth – corrupt the law and victimize the subject on whose behalf they are ostensibly employed.”

U.S. District Judge Larry Burns previously ruled that Loughner is mentally unfit to stand trial, and Loughner was sent to the Springfield, Missouri federal prison for psychiatric treatment.

Psychiatry’s increasing influence in criminal justice has produced only escalating crime rates internationally. Although incapable of either predicting future dangerousness or of rehabilitating criminals, psychiatrists still testify, in court on behalf of the highest bidder, asserting that offenders are not responsible for what they have done, but are instead “victims” of fictitious mental disorders. The result is rising crime, as lawbreakers are put back on the streets to wreak more havoc, unrepentant and uncorrected.

The rehabilitation of criminals is a long-forgotten dream. We build more prisons and pass even tougher laws in the belief that these will act as a deterrent. Meanwhile, honest people are losing faith in justice itself as they see vicious criminals avoid conviction through the use of bizarre and incomprehensible defense tactics. First and foremost it should be recognized that every person is responsible for his or her own actions and must be held accountable for their actions.

It is an old maxim that if a person wants to break the law with impunity he must become the law – a maxim taken to heart by psychiatrists. Psychiatry was posed as a solution to crime and became the problem. The first step to recovery is to remove psychiatric influence from the courts, police departments, prisons and schools.

For more information, click here to download and read the complete CCHR report, “Eroding Justice—Psychiatry’s Corruption of Law — Report and recommendations on psychiatry subverting the courts and corrective services.”

Johnson & Johnson recalls Risperdal and Risperidone Tablets

A foul smelling odor has prompted the voluntary recall of one lot each of Johnson & Johnson’s Risperdal and Risperidone tablets.

Risperdal (generic name risperidone) is an atypical antipsychotic drug, also called a major tranquilizer, neuroleptic (nerve-seizing) drug, or chemical straightjacket. The ingestion of a single tablet of risperidone may cause significant toxic poisoning in a toddler. This class of antipsychotics may also cause increased risk of diabetes, and an increased risk of stroke and death in the elderly.

Antipsychotic drugs were originally developed in the 1950’s to treat psychosis and so-called schizophrenia. Atypical antipsychotics developed since the 1990’s were marketed as having fewer harmful side effects than the older ones. But they do not.

All antipsychotics can cause akathisia (a word derived from a, without; kathisia, sitting; an inability to keep still). Akathisia is a terrible feeling of anxiety, an inability to sit still, a feeling that one wants to crawl out of his skin. This side effect has been linked to assaultive, violent behavior and can be experienced by up to 76% of patients taking the drugs.

Putting a foreign substance such as a psychotropic drug into your body disrupts the body’s normal biochemistry. Sometimes this disruption creates a false and temporary feeling of euphoria (being “high”), short-lived bursts of increased energy or an abnormal sense of heightened alertness. However, it is not natural to feel like this. The feeling does not last and addiction can result. These drugs work by influencing the normal functions of the body: they speed them up, slow them down, dam them up or overwhelm them. This is why you get side effects with psychiatric drugs.

But do not think that these drugs heal anything. They are intended to cover up or “mask” your problems. Meanwhile, they tend to wear out your body. Like a car run on rocket fuel, you may be able to get it to run a thousand miles an hour to the end of the block, but the tires, the engine and the internal parts fly apart in doing so. Side effects can sometimes be more pronounced than a drug’s intended effects. They are, in fact, the body’s natural response to the invasion of a chemical that is confusing its normal functions.

Antipsychotic drugs damage the extensive complex network of nerve fibers that moderate motor control, resulting in muscle rigidity, spasms and various involuntary movements.

There is no question that people do experience problems and upsets in life that may result in mental troubles, sometimes very serious. But to say that these are “medical diseases” or caused by a “chemical imbalance” that can only be treated with dangerous drugs is dishonest, harmful and often deadly. What psychiatric drugs do instead is mask the real cause of problems, often denying you the opportunity to search for workable, effective solutions.

Psychiatrists routinely do not inform patients of nondrug treatments, nor do they conduct thorough medical examinations to ensure that a person’s problem does not stem from an untreated medical condition that is causing the mental disturbance. Therefore, it is recommended that all patients first see a medical doctor (especially one who is familiar with nutritional needs), who should obtain and review a thorough medical history of the patient and conduct a complete physical exam, ruling out all the possible problems that might cause the person’s symptoms. According to top experts, the majority of people having mental problems are actually suffering from nonpsychiatric disease that is causing emotional stress.

So you see, a recall of this drug due to a possible manufacturing problem may actually save some lives, as the side effects of this drug are often more horrendous than the person’s original problem.

For more information, go to http://www.cchrstl.org/sideeffects.shtml.

The medical research world has been concerned about the problem of ghostwriting for more than a decade.

The issue has been repeatedly raised in the mainstream media over the past few years, with most of the commentary focused on the ethics of academics serving as authors on papers they did not write and on some of the most egregious actions by pharmaceutical companies.

But these efforts miss the ways in which Big Pharma has developed new forms of medical research to serve its own interests.

Big Pharma firms spend twice as much on promotion as on research and development (R&D). But it is worse than that: more and more medical R&D is organized as promotional campaigns to make physicians aware of products. The bulk of the industry’s external funding for research now goes to contract research organizations to produce studies that feed into large numbers of articles submitted to medical journals.

Internal documents from Pfizer, made public in litigation, showed that 85 scientific articles on its antidepressant Zoloft were produced and coordinated by a public relations company. Pfizer itself thus produced a critical mass of the favorable articles placed among the 211 scientific papers on Zoloft in the same period. Internal documents tell similar stories for Merck’s Vioxx, GlaxoSmithKline’s Paxil, Astra-Zeneca’s Seroquel, and Wyeth’s hormone-replacement drugs.

In the ghost management of research and publication by drug companies we have a new model of science. This is corporate science, done by many unseen workers, performed for marketing purposes, and drawing its authority from traditional academic science. The high commercial stakes mean that all of the parties connected with this new corporate science can find reasons or be induced to participate, support, and steadily normalize it. It also biases the available science by pushing favorable results and downplaying negative ones – and sometimes through outright fraud.

Click here to read the entire article on pharmaceutical ghost-writing.

The underlying problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior or study problems as “diseases,” combined with the profit-motives of pharmaceutical companies vying for a piece of the resultant psychiatric “treatment.”

Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.

Are our children really at risk or is Patrick McGorry selling us Voodoo Science & Snake Oil? Should we trust our children’s lives to Patrick McGorry?

Do we want our children to be labelled with Psychosis Risk Syndrome? The Australian Federal Government has handed $400 million dollars to Patrick McGorry for a national program to create early psychosis prevention and intervention centers, where children as young as three years old can be diagnosed as “at risk of developing psychosis” and given harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs.

Since you already know that psychiatric drugs are harmful for adults, what do you think the effects would be on a three-year-old?

What kind of lunacy would screen toddlers for “the potential to develop mental illness later in life” and give them mind-altering drugs?

Read the full article here: http://utopia.edu.au/2011/05/voodoo-science-snake-oil/.

For more information about early intervention programs, go here: http://www.cchrint.org/tag/early-intervention/.

What is America’s most dangerous prescription drug? It’s not Adderall or Oxy. It’s Klonopin. And doctors are doling it out like candy, causing a surge of hellish withdrawals, overdoses and deaths.

Klonopin is the brand name for the generic clonazepam, which was originally brought to market in 1975 as a medication for epileptic seizures. Since then, Klonopin, along with the other drugs in this class, has become a prescription of choice for drug abusers from Hollywood to Wall Street. In the process, these substances have also earned the dubious distinction of being second only to opioid painkillers like OxyContin as our nation’s most widely abused class of drug.

Klonopin is used as an anti-anxiety drug, in the class of drugs that are also called minor tranquilizers, benzodiazepines or sedative hypnotics. Daily use of these drugs is associated with physical dependence, and
addiction can occur after only 14 days of regular use. The typical consequences of withdrawal are anxiety, depression, sweating, cramps, nausea, psychotic reactions and seizures. There is also a “rebound effect” where the individual experiences even worse symptoms than they started with as a result of chemical dependency.

Alcoholics and drug addicts are most likely to run into Klonopin during detox, when it is used to prevent seizures and control the symptoms of acute withdrawal. Klonopin takes longer to metabolize and passes through the system more slowly than other benzodiazepines, so in theory you don’t need to take it so frequently. But if you like the high it gives you, and  keep increasing your dosage, the addictive effects of the drug accumulate quickly and can often be devastating. The drug’s label clearly specifies that it is “recommended” only for short-term use—say, seven to 10 days—but once exposed to the pill’s seductive side-effects, many patients come back for more. And not surprisingly, many doctors are happy to refill prescriptions to meet this consumer demand.

Read much more about this at
http://www.cchrint.org/2011/06/02/americas-most-dangerous-pill-klonopin/

and find out more about psychiatric drug side effects at
http://www.cchrstl.org/sideeffects.shtml.

Florida has plied children in state juvenile jails with heavy doses of powerful antipsychotic medications.

The pills, widely viewed as the “big guns” of psychiatry, can cause suicidal thoughts and other dangerous side effects.

Yet, in state-run jails and residential programs, antipsychotics were among the top drugs bought for kids – and they routinely were doled out for reasons that never were approved by federal regulators, a Palm Beach Post investigation has found.

Reacting to the newspaper’s findings, the head of Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice ordered a sweeping review of the department’s use of antipsychotic medications. As it stands now, DJJ doesn’t track prescriptions and has no way of telling whether doctors are putting kids on pills simply to make them easier to control.

Read the full article in The Palm Beach Post here.

All human rights organizations set forth codes by which they align their purposes and activities. The Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights articulates the guiding principles of CCHR and the standards against which human rights violations by psychiatry are relentlessly investigated and exposed.

A. The right to full informed consent, including:

1. The scientific/medical test confirming any alleged diagnoses of psychiatric disorder and the right to refute any psychiatric diagnoses of mental “illness” that cannot be medically confirmed.

2. Full disclosure of all documented risks of any proposed drug or “treatment.”

3. The right to be informed of all available medical treatments which do not include the administration of a psychiatric drug or treatment.

4. The right to refuse any treatment the patient considers harmful.

B. No person shall be given psychiatric or psychological treatment against his or her will.

C. No person, man, woman or child, may be denied his or her personal liberty by reason of mental illness, so-called, without a fair jury trial by laymen and with proper legal representation.

D. No person shall be admitted to or held in a psychiatric institution, hospital or facility because of their political, religious or cultural beliefs and practices.

E. Any patient has:

1. The right to be treated with dignity as a human being.

2. The right to hospital amenities without distinction as to race, color, sex, language, religion, political opinion, social origin or status by right of birth or property.

3. The right to have a thorough, physical and clinical examination by a competent registered general practitioner of one’s choice, to ensure that one’s mental condition is not caused by any undetected and untreated physical illness, injury or defect and the right to seek a second medical opinion of one’s choice.

4. The right to fully equipped medical facilities and appropriately trained medical staff in hospitals, so that competent physical, clinical examinations can be performed.

5. The right to choose the kind or type of therapy to be employed, and the right to discuss this with a general practitioner, healer or minister of one’s choice.

6. The right to have all the side effects of any offered treatment made clear and understandable to the patient, in written form and in the patient’s native language.

7. The right to accept or refuse treatment but in particular, the right to refuse sterilization, electroshock treatment, insulin shock, lobotomy (or any other psychosurgical brain operation), aversion therapy, narcotherapy, deep sleep therapy and any drugs producing unwanted side effects.

8. The right to make official complaints, without reprisal, to an independent board which is composed of nonpsychiatric personnel, lawyers and lay people. Complaints may encompass any torturous, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment received while under psychiatric care.

9. The right to have private counsel with a legal advisor and to take legal action.

10. The right to discharge oneself at any time and to be discharged without restriction, having committed no offense.

11. The right to manage one’s own property and affairs with a legal advisor, if necessary, or if deemed incompetent by a court of law, to have a State appointed executor to manage such until one is adjudicated competent. Such executor is accountable to the patient’s next of kin, or legal advisor or guardian.

12. The right to see and possess one’s hospital records and to take legal action with regard to any false information contained therein which may be damaging to one’s reputation.

13. The right to take criminal action, with the full assistance of law enforcement agents, against any psychiatrist, psychologist or hospital staff for any abuse, false imprisonment, assault from treatment, sexual abuse or rape, or any violation of mental health or other law. And the right to a mental health law that does not indemnify or modify the penalties for criminal, abusive or negligent treatment of patients committed by any psychiatrist, psychologist or hospital staff.

14. The right to sue psychiatrists, their associations and colleges, the institution, or staff for unlawful detention, false reports or damaging treatment.

15. The right to work or to refuse to work, and the right to receive just compensation on a pay scale comparable to union or state/national wages for similar work, for any work performed while hospitalized.

16. The right to education or training so as to enable one to earn a living when discharged, and the right of choice over what kind of education or training is received.

17. The right to receive visitors and a minister of one’s own faith.

18. The right to make and receive telephone calls and the right to privacy with regard to all personal correspondence to and from anyone.

19. The right to freely associate or not with any group or person in a psychiatric institution, hospital or facility.

20. The right to a safe environment without having in the environment, persons placed there for criminal reasons.

21. The right to be with others of one’s own age group.

22. The right to wear personal clothing, to have personal effects and to have a secure place in which to keep them.

23. The right to daily physical exercise in the open.

24. The right to a proper diet and nutrition and to three meals a day.

25. The right to hygienic conditions and nonovercrowded facilities, and to sufficient, undisturbed leisure and rest.