Posts Tagged ‘TakeAction’

Emergency Room Visits for Children’s Mental Health Fails to Help

Monday, January 9th, 2023

A New York Times article (12/27/2022) proclaimed, “Families of children with mental health needs increasingly rely on the emergency department (ED) for care.”

The article goes on to say that, “Pediatric mental health ED visits are commonly repeat visits, and most revisits occur within 6 months of initial presentation.”

The article cites a research study published December 27, 2022 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, which analyzed 308,264 pediatric (ages 3 to 17) mental health ED visits at 38 hospitals between 2015 and 2020.

Such pediatric mental health ED visits made up 4.0% of all ED visits.

The NYTimes further said that, “The patients most likely to reappear in emergency rooms were not patients who harmed themselves, but rather those whose agitation and aggressive behavior proved too much for their caregivers to manage. In many cases, repeat visitors had previously received sedatives or other drugs to restrain them when their behavior became disruptive. … Patients who required medications to subdue them were 22 percent more likely to revisit than patients who did not.”

“Families come in with their children who have severe behavioral problems, and the families really just are at their wit’s end, you know,” said Dr. Anna M. Cushing, a pediatric emergency room physician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and one of the authors of the study.

“The JAMA study found that overall visits to pediatric emergency rooms for mental health crises increased 43 percent from 2015 to 2020, rising by 8 percent per year on average, with an increase in emergency visits for every category of mental illness. By comparison, emergency room visits for all medical causes rose by 1.5 percent annually.”

The sad conclusion: “Emergency room treatment is comforting to caregivers but offers little long-term benefit.”

We see several serious issues with the situation here.

1. Mental health behavior problems for children appear to be increasing.
2. Parents and other caregivers generally do not know how to cope with this.
3. Psychiatric drugs used as chemical restraints, and other psychiatric treatments, are not helping.
4. Emergency rooms are not a solution.

Why is this happening and what can be done about it?

1. Drugging children in America has reached epidemic proportions. More than 8 million children and teenagers are prescribed harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs: antidepressants, stimulants and antipsychotics. And the targets are getting younger. Children five years old and younger are the fastest growing segment of the non-adult population using antidepressants in the United States today. Many health professionals question this rampant use of pharmaceuticals on children.

The truth is, in MANY cases children acting disruptive is not a symptom of psychological or chemical disorder but … A SYMPTOM OF CHILDHOOD!

Regardless of any social, economic, political, or other considerations, these psychiatric drugs are known to cause harmful side effects including behavior problems, violence and suicide. Small wonder that mental health behavior problems for children appear to be increasing.

2. When it comes to raising children, parents must always be the first defense and have the final word. Yet witness the social upheavals currently occurring as local, state and federal governments battle among parents, school boards, psychiatrists, pharmaceutical companies, and other “know-best” vested interests, about how children should be raised and educated. No wonder parents and caregivers are confused about who is lying and who is telling the truth!

In Missouri, legislators have to fight to pass laws giving parents the right to raise their children, a right which they should already have, but are consistently denied. This makes it exceedingly difficult to provide the sane education parents need to decide what is best for their children.

3. Not only are psychiatric drugs not helping, they are actively hurting. The trouble is that psychiatric propaganda has thoroughly duped well-meaning parents, teachers and politicians alike, that normal childhood behavior is a “mental illness”, and that only by continuous, heavy drugging from an early age can children make it through life’s worst.

Seventeen million schoolchildren worldwide have now been diagnosed with so-called mental disorders and prescribed cocaine-like stimulants and powerful antidepressants as “treatment.” Biological psychiatry has yet to validate a single psychiatric diagnosis as anything neurological, biological, chemically imbalanced or genetic. The rise in gratuitous and murderous violence amongst youth is linked to the introduction of and increases in these violence-inducing drugs.

4. If emergency rooms are obviously not a solution, then what is? Well, there isn’t a single magic wand, but there are multiple recommendations; pick those you can do, and do them.

a. Contact your local, state and federal officials, and your parents’ groups and school boards, and tell them what you think; and that coercive and unworkable psychiatric methods should not be funded by the State.
b. You have the right to refuse permission for your child to be subjected to psychiatric drugs or other psychiatric treatments or interference.
c. If your child has been subjected to psychiatric treatment without your consent, consult a lawyer to determine your right to prosecute criminally and civilly.
d. Support legislative measures that will protect children from psychiatric interference.
e. Educate yourself on sane and effective alternatives to coercive and harmful psychiatric treatments.

Stop psychiatric drugging of kids.
Stop psychiatric drugging of kids

DEAR POTENTIAL CCHR STL VOLUNTEERS

Thursday, January 5th, 2023

At one time you may have expressed interest in the mission of CCHR St. Louis, or you may have expressed interest in volunteering with CCHR St. Louis.

To remind you of our Mission:

Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is a nonprofit charitable mental health watchdog organization dedicated to eradicating psychiatric abuses and ensuring patient protections. 

Volunteers Needed One Day

Missouri State Capitol Building
Jefferson City, Missouri

3rd Floor Rotunda, House Side

8:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

Help inform our legislators about CCHR Issues.

Distribute documentary DVD’s and other CCHR properties to legislative offices and man our table passing out CCHR materials.

Our state legislators and their aides are generally receptive to citizen’s concerns.

Hatting is included. Help out and participate in our civic mission.

Please reply to CCHRSTL@CCHRSTL.ORG with your contact information and availability.

Best regards,

Moritz Farbstein

Public Affairs Director

Citizens Commission on Human Rights® of St. Louis

P.O. Box 300256

St. Louis, MO 63130-9256

www.CCHRSTL.org

CCHRSTL@CCHRSTL.ORG

Take Action – Missouri Legislature

Monday, December 26th, 2022

Periodically we let you know the progress of various proposed legislation making its way through the Missouri General Assembly and suggest ways for you to contribute your viewpoint to your state Representative and state Senator.

The Missouri General Assembly is the state legislature of the State of Missouri and is composed of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate. The General Assembly is responsible for creating laws for governing the State of Missouri. The Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo) are electronically available on this site:  http://revisor.mo.gov/.

You can find your Representative and Senator, and their contact information, by entering your 9-digit zip code here.

The 2023 Regular Session (102nd General Assembly, 1st Regular Session) convenes on Wednesday, January 4, 2023, and will end on Friday, May 12, 2023. So far there are 474 proposed House Bills prefiled for the session. You can see these HBs by clicking here; and so far there are 373 proposed Senate Bills prefiled for the session, listed here.

If you are not a voting resident of Missouri, you can find out about legislation in your own state and write your own state legislators; also, we are looking for volunteers to monitor legislation in Missouri and the states surrounding Missouri — let us know if you’d like to help out.

Check out our handy discussion about How to write to a legislator.

We Urge You To Contact Your Legislators To Express Your Own Viewpoints

We’d like to describe some bills about which we’d particularly like you to contact your legislators. Please write, call or visit to express your viewpoint as an individual or professional, and not as a representative of any organization. Let us know the details and any responses you get. The full text of each bill can be found on the House and Senate Joint Bill Tracking site. Just put the bill number into the search box (e.g. SB123 or HB123).

Very Very Bad Bills

HB146 (Sponsor: Representative Jo Doll, Democrat, District 91 – St. Louis)

This bill requires health care professionals that provide maternity health care services to screen for mental disorders and mental illnesses in all pregnant women as early as possible at the onset of prenatal care and throughout the pregnancy. Any pregnant woman found to have a mental disorder or mental illness shall be referred for treatment.

This bill would expand harmful psychiatric services to vulnerable women. Mental health screening based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) not only is the means by which psychiatrists drum up new business, but also is a major threat to the civil liberties and freedoms of all those in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Mental health screening aims to get whole populations on drugs and thus under control. Patients with actual physical conditions (such as pregnancy) are routinely misdiagnosed with psychiatric disorders, then drugged or institutionalized. Numerous studies show that untreated physical problems can cause behavioral and emotional problems, not to mention the many problems caused by adverse reactions (side effects) to psychiatric drugs. 


HB378 (Sponsor: Representative Crystal Quade, Democrat, District 132 – Greene County)

This bill directs the Department of Mental Health to establish a grant program for nonprofits to set up behavioral crisis centers to deliver mental health treatment in an emergency; where “behavioral crisis” means any instance in which a person’s behavior makes the person a danger to himself or herself or others or prevents the person from functioning effectively in the community.

By their own admission psychiatrists cannot predict a person’s dangerousness or violence. The popular refrain that psychiatry can determine if a person is a danger to self or others is a complete fraud.

No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable, subject to unreasonable depression, anxiety or panic. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods  that improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society by restoring people to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well-being. Psychiatric drugs and psychiatric treatments are not workable.


SB122 (Sponsor: Senator Karla May, Democrat, District 4 – St. Louis)

This bill provides that a child may be excused from attendance at school if the child is unable to attend school due to mental or behavioral health concerns, provided that the school receives documentation from a mental health professional.

This is a bald attempt to funnel vulnerable children into the mental health system, where they can be drugged with violence-causing psychotropic drugs.

Claiming that even normal childhood behavior is a mental disorder and that drugs are the solution, psychiatrists and psychologists have insinuated themselves into positions of authority over children. Through a virtual coup d’etat in our schools, our once strong and effective scholastic-based schools have turned into explosive test tubes.

Psychiatrists and psychologists have invaded our once successful education systems and converted them into behavioral laboratories. The entirety of psychological and psychiatric programs for children are founded on the tacit assumptions that mental health “experts” know all about the mind and mental phenomena, know a better way of life, a better value system and how to improve the lives of children beyond the understanding and capability of not only parents, but everyone else in society. 

The reality is that all child mental health programs are designed to control the lives of children towards specific ideological objectives at the expense of not only the children’s sanity and well-being, but also that of their parents and of society itself.

The antidote to a child’s “behavioral health concerns” is academics and literacy, not removing them from school on the condition they are in psychiatric treatment.



Very Good Bills

SB158 (Sponsor: Senator Nick Schroer, Republican, District 2 – St. Charles County) 

This bill establishes “The Parents’ Bill of Rights for Student Well-Being” which lists rights for parents relating to education, health care, and mental health. The act prohibits public schools and school districts from infringing on the rights of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, health care, or mental health of such parent’s minor child without first demonstrating that the infringement is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest and such interest cannot be otherwise served by a less restrictive means.

No one but their parents should be determining the mental health care for a child.


SJR29 (Senate Joint Resolution 29, Sponsor: Senator Jill Carter, Republican, District 32 – Jasper and Newton counties)

This proposed constitutional amendment would provide that every parent has a fundamental right to exercise exclusive control over all aspects of their minor children’s lives without governmental interference, including, but not limited to, decisions regarding their minor children’s custody, upbringing, education, religious instruction, discipline, physical and mental health care, and place of habitation. Read the bill summary for the full list of rights.

No one but their parents should be determining the mental health care for a child.

CCHR STL Volunteers Needed for 2022 Event November 1

Wednesday, August 24th, 2022

CCHR STL Volunteers Needed

St. Louis Business Expo
St. Charles Convention Center
St. Charles, Missouri
The Region’s #1 Business Conference, Trade Show and Networking Event.
[https://www.stlouisbusinessexpo.com/]

Tuesday, November 1, 2022
11am-5pm (plus setup and tear down times)

The Event Is FREE to Attend and Open To The Public.

Help inform our community about CCHR Issues. Help man our booth to distribute documentary DVD’s and other CCHR materials to bring human rights to the field of mental health care.

Volunteer now by emailing: CCHRSTL@CCHRSTL.ORG

Citizens Commission on Human Rights® of St. Louis

Take Action – Missouri Legislature

Monday, January 24th, 2022

Periodically we let you know the progress of various proposed legislation making its way through the Missouri General Assembly and suggest ways for you to contribute your viewpoint to your state Representative and state Senator.

The Missouri General Assembly is the state legislature of the State of Missouri and is composed of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate. The General Assembly is responsible for creating laws for governing the State of Missouri. The Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo) are electronically available on this site:  http://revisor.mo.gov/.

You can find your Representative and Senator, and their contact information, by entering your 9-digit zip code here.

The 2022 Regular Session (101st General Assembly, 2nd Regular Session) convened on Wednesday, January 5, 2022, and will end on Friday, May 13, 2022.

This time we’d like to discuss new bills about which we’d like you to contact your legislators. Please write, call or visit to express from your viewpoint as an individual or professional, and not as a representative of any organization. Let us know the details and any responses you get. The full text of each bill can be found on the House and Senate Joint Bill Tracking site. Just put the bill number into the search box (e.g. SB123 or HB123).

Check out our handy discussion about How to write to a legislator.

If you are not a voting resident of Missouri, you can find out about legislation in your own state and write your own state legislators; also, we are looking for volunteers to monitor legislation in Missouri and the states surrounding Missouri — let us know if you’d like to help out.

Very Bad Bills

These are bills that further psychiatric abuses of human rights, and are moving swiftly toward becoming law. Please express your opposition and opinions about this to your legislators and copy the bill sponsor.

HB2342 (Sponsor: Representative Tricia Derges, Republican, District 140 – Christian county)

This bill provides for children to seek mental health counseling and treatment without parental consent, and all records and referrals are confidential from parents and guardians. The provider must immediately determine if the child is a danger to self or others.

By their own admission psychiatrists cannot predict a person’s dangerousness or violence. The popular refrain that psychiatry can determine if a person is a danger to self or others is a complete fraud.

This bill would expand harmful psychiatric services to vulnerable children. This is the gateway to sending a child to a psychiatric hospital without any parental knowledge or consent. Psychiatrists, school counselors and other mental health practitioners have a terrible track record of accurately determining if a child is a danger to self or others, and this is the criteria for determining such things as involuntary commitment.


HB1978 (Sponsor: Representative Ann Kelley, Republican, District 127 – Lamar, Dade, Barton, Jasper, Cedar counties)

Under current federal law, a person who is in an institution for mental disease cannot receive Medicaid coverage. This bill requires the Department of Social Services (DSS) to apply for a waiver from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in order to give MO HealthNet coverage for mental health services provided in residential programs in psychiatric facilities.

This bill would expand harmful psychiatric services (and consequent budget) to a new and vulnerable patient population.



HB2019 (Sponsor: Representative Yolanda Young, Democrat, District 22 – Jackson county)

This bill provides financial supplements, subject to appropriation, for public schools to employ school nurses and mental health professionals. A school district must apply to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and specify the schools that will hire these positions. The amount of the supplement is capped at $40,000 per school per position. The bill creates the “School Nurse Financial Supplement Fund” and the “School Mental Health Professional Financial Supplement Fund” in the State Treasury, and requires DESE to create rules ensuring that positions funded with supplement money only perform duties associated with the job title, and preference be given to schools that demonstrate the greatest need.

This bill would expand harmful psychiatric services (and consequent budget) to vulnerable school children.



HB2253 (Sponsor: Representative Crystal Quade, Democrat, District 132 – Greene county)

This bill provides for the Department of Mental Health to help non profits set up behavioral crisis centers for those who are danger to self and others. It’s a psychiatric hospital under another name.

By their own admission psychiatrists cannot predict a person’s dangerousness or violence. The popular refrain that psychiatry can determine if a person is a danger to self or others is a complete fraud.

This bill would expand harmful psychiatric services (and consequent budget) to a new and vulnerable patient population.



Relatively Good Bills

These are bills that inhibit psychiatric abuses of human rights, and are moving swiftly toward becoming law. Please express your support and opinions about this to your legislators and copy the bill sponsor.

SB810 (Sponsor: Senator Andrew Koenig, Republican, District 15 – Part of St. Louis County) and Related Bills (SB776, SB653, HB1474, HB1755, HB1858, HB1995, HB2008, HB2068, HB2132, HB2189, HB2195, HB2294, HJR110)

SB810 establishes “The Parents’ Bill of Rights for Student Well-Being” and modifies other provisions of elementary and secondary education.

Similar to others about parental ability to object to curriculum and withdraw student from sex education and “certain classroom materials”. While this bill is Anti-Psych in part, it is somewhat concerning in other parts. It is the most measured and complex of this series of bills. They will probably be combined as the session progresses.

Good part:
Under this act, no governmental entity, school district, or other public institution shall infringe on the fundamental rights, as provided in the act, of a natural parent, adoptive parent, or legal guardian of such parent’s minor child without demonstrating that the infringement is reasonable, narrowly tailored to a compelling state interest, and that such interest could not be served by less restrictive means.

Potentially problematic:
We are entirely in favor of parental rights. But most of these bills contain excessive and arbitrary burdens on the schools regarding curriculum and children’s mental health care. We would recommend completely separating parental rights from matters of curriculum and mental health.


HJR101 (Sponsor: Representative Yolanda Young, Democrat, District 22 – Jackson county)

Upon voter approval, this proposed Constitutional amendment (House Joint Resolution) removes a Constitutional voting prohibition on all persons who are subject to a guardianship of their estate or person, or all persons who are confined in a mental institution.

We think this is a fine human rights proposal.


SJR47 (Sponsor: Senator Mike Moon, Republican, District 29 – Barry, Lawrence, McDonald, Stone, and Taney counties)

Prohibits laws or public policies infringing on the right of individuals to refuse medical procedures or treatments

This constitutional amendment, if adopted by the voters, prohibits the passage or implementation of any law, order, ordinance, regulation or public policy of the state or any political subdivision of the state, including schools and institutions of higher education that receive public funds, that infringes upon the unquestionable right of individuals to refuse any medical procedure or treatment, including, but not limited to, injections, vaccines, or prophylactics. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged to any person in this state because of the exercise of this right. Nothing in this amendment shall be interpreted to infringe upon a parent’s right to exercise control over their minor, unemancipated child’s physical and mental care.

CCHR also recommends that concerned individuals execute a Living Will which lets you specify decisions about your health care treatment in advance. Should you be in a position where you are to be subject to unwanted psychiatric hospitalization and/or mental or medical treatment, this Letter of Protection from Psychiatric Incarceration and/or Treatment directs that such incarceration, hospitalization, treatment or procedures not be imposed, committed or used on you.

Forced Psychiatry is Legislated Violence

Inflation – What it Really is

Monday, November 22nd, 2021

Why are balloons so expensive? Inflation!

There are those whose vested interests encourage them to obfuscate all with which they tamper. Their livelihoods, so they figure, depend on the masses not understanding their manipulations.

So it is that the whole subject of economics has been compromised with large words, so that these vested interests can manipulate the money supply to their advantage and to the disadvantage of everyone else.

Inflation is really a simple thing, when you come right down to it, in spite of massive efforts to keep it confusing.

So what is it?

Inflation occurs when the amount of money in the country exceeds the amount of things there are to buy. This upsets the whole field of economics. You have a cheapening of money, and that’s inflation — a shortage of goods compared to available money, so money won’t buy what it used to buy.

Inflation is an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to the available goods, resulting in a substantial and continuing rise in the general price level.

There are only two ways out of this situation. One is to do our jobs better and make more money; and the other is to increase production so there is more to buy. Oh, and stop pumping extra money into the economy without increasing production, and stop the political harassment keeping everyone on edge.

When the facilities to produce things are lacking, or when the populace is continuously being disturbed by political machinations, you get inflation.

It really isn’t any more complicated than that. And anyone who tells you differently has something personal to gain out of it.

The opposite situation, or deflation, is equally debilitating. Deflation occurs when the amount of products to buy exceed the amount of money there is to buy things.

The best scenario then is a balance between inflation and deflation. There’s enough money to buy what people want, and there’s enough product to buy with it.

Psychiatric Inflation

This idea extends to other, non-economic fields, such as psychiatry. This is called “diagnostic inflation” — the apparent broadening of the definitions of mental disorders, meaning that more people in the society can be diagnosed with mental disorders, giving the false appearance of increasing mental trauma in society. Diagnoses become less stringently defined, as with the fraudulent diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), and their prevalence in society increases as a result. Notable examples of diagnostic inflation include Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), autism, eating disorders, and substance dependence.

The ultimate reason for diagnostic inflation is the fraudulent nature of the DSM, which is not backed by any clinical laboratory measure.

Here are some specific examples of diagnostic inflation in the DSM.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder has 6 separate entries.
Eating disorder has 4 separate entries.
Various forms of substance abuse have 100 separate entries.
Various forms of sleep disorder have 60 separate entries.

A psychiatrist would be hard-pressed not to find some disorder to fit anyone sitting in front of them, if only the supreme catch-all diagnosis of “Unspecified mental disorder”.

But unlike with monetary inflation, a psychiatric diagnosis is not a product anyone wants to buy.

Recommendations

Educate Yourself – Find Out About psychiatric Fraud and Abuse.

Take Action – Fight Back Against psychiatric Fraud and Abuse.

Report Adverse psychiatric Drug Reactions to the FDA

Report Any Mental Health Abuse to CCHR

Volunteer Some Time

Donate Some Funds

CCHR Notifies Electroshock Hospitals On The Failure To Inform Patients Of Risks

Monday, November 1st, 2021

Watchdog says electroshock must be banned, but until this occurs, hospitals are being notified that omitting patient information of how electroshock treatment causes brain-damage and memory loss may constitute consumer fraud.

Until ECT is banned, CCHR intends to investigate and monitor precisely what information is provided to potential ECT patients and their families by electroshock-hospitals, so that such information may be available to regulatory entities and legal counsel for the those harmed by this practice.

CCHR is writing to the more than 400 psychiatric facilities in the U.S. delivering ECT alerting them to the recognized risks that patients must be informed of to protect them and to avoid consumer fraud action being taken against the hospital and psychiatrists administering ECT. As part of a worldwide movement that wants electroshock permanently banned, until this occurs, every known risk of the damaging practice must be disclosed along with all safer, non-physically invasive alternatives that are available.

CCHR’s review of hospital websites offering ECT and electroshock informed consent forms, shows grossly inadequate information, which is misleading to patients. At a time when mental health is so prevalent in the news, better information must be disclosed until this brain-damaging procedure is banned.

Example: Approximately 150,000 people get ECT every year in the US, with 2,000 shock treatments being done every year by Washington University in St. Louis psychiatrists at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, who still claim that this abusive treatment is safe and effective in spite of abundant evidence to the contrary. When psychiatrists say ECT is “effective”, they mean the patient feels less depressed; of course, the patient doesn’t feel much of anything anymore, good or bad. In fact, what ECT really does is similar to smacking your thumb with a hammer, making it seem that no other problem is important. (Of course, they give you a general anesthetic to suppress the pain. The body still feels it; shocking, isn’t it?)

So why do they still perform ECT? Because they charge up to $2500 per session; and if you are on Medicare you are a prime candidate for this barbaric “treatment.”

The bottom line is that electroshock should be banned and because, arguably, its use constitutes assault and battery — certainly from a patient’s perspective. It does not belong in any mental health system.

Take Action

ECT is a brutal practice and people should sign CCHR’s online petition supporting a ban.

Is Social Media Turning Us All Into Zombies?

Monday, October 18th, 2021

The debate continues to rage about whether smartphones and their attendant social media are addictive, or even whether they are good or bad for you and your children.

This quote from the November 2021 edition of Reason magazine puts the debate more into perspective:

“In 1936, the government of St. Louis, Missouri, tried to ban car radios because a ‘determined movement’ had become convinced that the radio distracted drivers and caused car accidents. The car radio was widely feared by newspapers, which were competitors and had every incentive to sensationalize the product’s dangers.”

We’re not going to come down on one side or the other, it isn’t our fight; but we can certainly remark on the psychiatric connection.

The psychiatric Connection

Psychiatry assumes any so-called addiction is a medical disease. This is patently false; any such media addiction, real or imagined, is an educational or moral failing. It cannot be usefully addressed with drugs or other harmful psychiatric treatments.

Other forms of addiction currently promoted for treatment by psychiatry and psychology are gaming, substance abuse, gambling, and other impulse control issues such as pyromania, kleptomania and promiscuity. Yes, physical addiction may occur with substance abuse; but there are valid non-psychiatric programs for that.

So what are these various behaviors if they are not mental illnesses? They’re called lapses in education, ethics and morals, and when treated as such there is hope that they can be corrected. Unfortunately, calling them “mental illness” and treating them with psychotropic drugs precludes any possibility of finding out the true root causes and effectively addressing those.

The entirety of psychological and psychiatric addiction programs are founded on the tacit assumptions that mental health “experts” know all about the mind and mental phenomena, know a better way of life, a better value system and how to improve lives beyond the understanding and capability of everyone else in society.

The reality is that these mental health programs are designed to control people towards specific ideological objectives at the expense of the person’s sanity and well-being. Do we really want to institutionalize mandatory psychiatric counseling and screening, which is where all this is heading?

We think the whole thing comes back to what the late Professor Thomas Szasz, co-founder of Citizens Commission on Human Rights, originally had to say about this:
• “The term ‘mental illness’ refers to the undesirable thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of persons. Classifying thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as diseases is a logical and semantic error, like classifying the whale as a fish.”
• “If we recognize that ‘mental illness’ is a metaphor for disapproved thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, we are compelled to recognize as well that the primary function of Psychiatry is to control thought, mood, and behavior.”

These so-called mental disorders are just what psychiatry and psychology have inappropriately labeled as “undesirable behavior.”

The Reason article proposes a reasonable solution: “…can anything be done to combat some of the actual problems with tech addiction? Yes, but the answer isn’t easy or flashy: It’s for parents to exercise greater responsibility, talk to their kids about how much they rely on their phones, and set reasonable limits on screen time.”

What You Can Do

We’d like to encourage our readers to help us fund our efforts to bring sanity to the world of mental health care. The psychs haven’t backed off; they are busy exaggerating any mental health concerns raised by the Covid outbreak, and of course why you should see a psychiatrist and take some harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs.

Click here to send us some love.

‘Insanity’ isn’t an illness. It’s an injury. When more injuries called ‘treatments’ are piled on top of it, it becomes very hard to treat just because the person is now desperately injured. He hurts.

— L. Ron Hubbard, 12/15/1968

WHO Declares “Video Game Addiction” a Mental Health Disorder

Mental Health vs Mental Illness

Monday, August 23rd, 2021

We’ve heard a lot recently about Mental Health. The Olympics have brought to light the stresses of competition, grueling routines and being under constant public pressure and expectations to win—and carping criticism from spectators if the athlete fails to meet those expectations. It stands to reason that having a solid mental health outlook is a vital part of such challenges. And that it can falter.

We applaud all the athletes for not just their dedication and courage but also their service to sport and their respective countries.

While CCHR exposes psychiatric abuse, ultimately this is so that people can achieve true mental health—a positive outlook both emotionally and in thoughts and actions that enables a better life, not hampered by physically damaging “treatments.”

“Mental health,” as viewed in the psychiatric industry is seen as mental “illness:” using descriptive names based on biased observation to redefine not doing well mentally as a physical disease—with not a single medical test to confirm this. This often leads to the use of physically damaging treatments, but no cures. It is important to differentiate between psychiatry’s definition of “mental disorder” and what is mental health, and not confuse the two.

Rest assured, psychiatrists and psychologists will abuse the current mental health awareness to slip in the need for biochemical “solutions.” Like a Johns Hopkins university psychologist who claims a “really well-structured psychedelic” drug session is “equal to several years of ordinary psychotherapy.”

CCHR has always warned that psychiatry’s power rests on force and that true informed consent does not exist in the mental health system when it fails to inform those needing help that a mental disorder diagnosis is not based on scientific tests and that drugs and electroshock given in the absence of fully informed consent constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Recent United Nations and World Health Organization (WHO) reports agree—vindicating what CCHR has been fighting for for over 50 years!

The World Psychiatric Association (WPA) issued a statement acknowledging the international outrage over psychiatric coercion and called for alternatives to psych drugs and restraint use.

A former United Nations Special Rapporteur on health, Dr. Dainius P?ras, recently was interviewed for Psychiatric Times in the U.S. and condemned coercive psychiatry. He said that psych diagnoses perpetuate discrimination; biological psychiatry hasn’t worked and equated it with “totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.” He called for the “elimination of all forced psychiatric confinement and treatment.”

Relevant to the recent awareness about mental health, Dr. P?ras also said: “There is now unequivocal evidence of the failures of a system that relies too heavily on the biomedical model,” including psychotropic drugs.

Then the WHO issued a new guideline for mental health treatment in July, attacking “coercive psychiatry” as “pervasive” and that it must change. It supported a ban on “forced hospitalization and forced treatment,” including drugs and electroshock.

It is important for people to know the differences between mental health and psychiatric “disease,” and to be informed of the failures of this profession in ensuring mental health is achieved as opposed to creating mental ill-health.

Failed Mental Health Programs

A new major resource from CCHR International answers questions about why is psychiatry so controversial? Why do critics think psychiatry creates unhappiness, rather than curing it? How is it that psychiatric treatment causes harm? Why is that other doctors don’t think psychiatrists are “real doctors”? Why are psychiatrists their own worst enemies, while blaming their failures on both their patients and an “anti-psychiatry” movement that they, in fact, started?

Download and read this new publication, “Why Psychiatry Sees Itself as a Dying Industry  A Resource on its Failures and Critics.”

Support CCHR

Your support in helping CCHR would mean a great deal. Your help, as always, is an integral part of our success in raising awareness and being able to deliver the facts. Please donate to support the cause.

Volunteer help is also appreciated.

Going On Hoping

Monday, April 5th, 2021

Hope is the desire that sometime in the future, one will cease to have something which is no longer wanted but one can’t seem to get rid of (like a chronic pain), or that one will acquire something wanted.

“Going On Hoping” is the condition where one continues to hope in spite of no possibility of realizing one’s goal, particularly when one is not actively involved in realizing the goal.

Giving something a lick and a promise and hoping it will somehow be all right stems from laziness and stupidity. I hope that doesn’t offend anyone.

The better alternative is to control one’s environment by doing things well and thoroughly, leading to one’s goals.

The Psychiatric Way

Psychiatrists speak about “adaptation to one’s environment” as the way to handle Life. One of the primary ways psychiatric treatment attempts to adapt one to one’s environment is with drugs, which reduce or block restimulative stimuli by deadening the perceptive abilities of the central nervous system.

Many psychiatric studies on the topic emphasize how one’s environment, over which one apparently has little control, influences or controls one’s troubles. Toxins and contaminants in the environment; stress in the environment; one’s genes; one’s community and its social factors; the climate; PTSD; crime and other violent or dangerous situations in the environment; endemic systemic pandemic polemics.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry’s billing bible, promotes these environmental factors against which one supposedly cannot fight back as the diagnostic criteria showing the presence of a “mental disorder”. One such is the diagnosis of “Victim of crime.”

Of course, one can certainly find situations where it is helpful to adapt to an environment. Think of wearing a protective suit in a hostile environment such as outer space or under water.

We don’t minimize these environmental factors, which have been found to be major contributors to mental stress and trauma. Rather, we point out that the common psychiatric point of view is to only find ways a person can adapt to such stress, when there might also be ways to exert more control over the environmental factors and adapt the environment to oneself. There are even terms to describe this psychiatric viewpoint, such as “stress-adapted children”; meaning that they have learned how to adapt to stress in their environments.

In fact, the data indicate that drug treatment is not usually necessary if a proper interpersonal environment and social context is provided as alternatives to psychiatry.

The Better Alternative

It has also been found that if one knows the technology of how to do something and can do it, and uses it, he cannot be the adverse effect of it. So for example in the matters under discussion here, the more one knows about something in the environment, and the more one can handle and control that, the less bad effects it can cause one. This leads to the insight that the more one can adapt the environment to oneself, instead of only adapting oneself to the environment, then the less the environment can harm one.

One may exclaim all kinds of ifs, ands and buts in the matter. But the fact remains that it behooves one to find out more about whatever the trouble is, and search diligently for ways to influence or control that.

Recommendations

CCHR recommends various strategies to proactively cope with psychiatric fraud or abuse, an environmental stress to which one may be subjected. For example:

The Motto here is “FIND OUT! FIGHT BACK!