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Study Adds to Research Showing Involuntary Psychiatric Hospitalization Does More Harm Than Good

Monday, July 24th, 2023

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, July 13, 2023 — A new study has found that involuntary hospitalization for substance abuse treatment is not effective, adding to the growing body of research finding that forced behavioral health treatment does more harm than good and raising ethical questions about the use of coercion by the psychiatrists typically in charge of the treatment.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston investigated the outcomes of 22 patients involuntarily committed for substance abuse treatment after first coming to a hospital emergency room. The result was that after release, none of the patients stayed off their alcohol and/or drugs, and all of them ended up back in the emergency room within a year because of their substance misuse.

“One year following involuntary commitment, all patients had relapsed to substance use and had at least one emergency department visit,” wrote lead author John C. Messinger. Half reverted to substance abuse within two months after the start of their involuntary treatment.

“The study adds to a growing literature recognizing the harms of involuntary commitment for substance use disorder,” the researchers concluded.

Other research has found that forced hospitalization is also ineffective and harmful for mental health treatment. A study earlier this year found no benefit to patients’ mental health condition and no lower risk of death from nonconsensual mental health treatment.

This follows a 2020 study which found that psychiatric in-patients were actually more likely to attempt suicide after release if they were admitted and treated against their will as compared to those who were not.

The harm and lack of benefit from involuntary commitment for psychiatric treatment has resulted in some people avoiding mental health treatment. The U.S. 2011-2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health revealed that one in four depressed young adults cited their concern over being involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility or forced to take psychiatric drugs against their will as a reason not to seek mental health treatment.

The potential of involuntary psychiatric hospitalization and treatment doing more harm than good has led some medical professionals to argue that such acts violate the Hippocratic oath of “first do no harm” and should be abolished.

Among them is the co-founder of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), the late professor of psychiatry and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., who advocated an end to forced psychiatric treatment. Considered by many scholars and academics to be psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, Dr. Szasz wrote: “Increasing numbers of persons, both in the mental health professions and in public life, have come to acknowledge that involuntary psychiatric interventions are methods of social control. On both moral and practical grounds, I advocate the abolition of all involuntary psychiatry.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has also taken a strong position against coercive mental health practices. In a series of guidelines issued in 2021, WHO stated that nonconsensual practices are used “despite the lack of evidence that they offer any benefits, and the significant evidence that they lead to physical and psychological harm and even death.”

The guidelines further state: “People subjected to coercive practices report feelings of dehumanization, disempowerment and being disrespected. Many experience it as a form of trauma or re-traumatization leading to a worsening of their condition and increased experiences of distress.”

WHO’s call for an end to involuntary mental health treatment extends even to those experiencing acute mental distress. The guidelines note that individuals in mental health crisis “are at a heightened risk of their human rights being violated, including through forced admissions and treatment.”

WHO challenged United Nations member nations, including the United States, to ensure that their mental health services are free from coercion, including forced drugging, the use of physical and chemical restraints and seclusion, electroshock without consent, and involuntary institutionalization.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights has been a global leader in the fight against the coercive and abusive use of involuntary commitments, seclusion and restraints, psychiatric drugs, and electroshock. In 1969, CCHR issued a Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights that laid out fundamental human rights in the field of mental health to ensure the right to one’s own mind and the right to be free from forced mental health treatment.

CCHR was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and Dr. Szasz 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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New Study Tells Consumers the Truth of Potential Lethal Electroshock and Antidepressant Risks

Monday, February 21st, 2022

Over 14,800 ECT patients were 16 times more likely to try to commit suicide than a control group of 58,369; antidepressants can also induce suicidal feelings and frightening long-term withdrawal effects.

By CCHR International
The Mental Health Industry Watchdog
February 7, 2022

A new study published in Psychological Medicine questions the two principle physical treatments recommended for depression: antidepressants and electroshock therapy (ECT) and raises the alarm about their adverse effects on the brain.[1] Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a 53-year mental health industry watchdog, says the study contains vital information for consumers recommended for ECT, including the risk of suicide, all of which adds weight to the argument that the potentially brain-damaging practice should be prohibited as a mental health treatment.

The study by two UK experts, John Read, Ph.D., a psychologist and Joanna Moncrieff, M.D., a psychiatrist, discusses the need for non-harmful alternatives that are safe and effective. They cite the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandates that ECT machines have signs stating: “The long-term safety and effectiveness of ECT treatment has not been demonstrated.” Yet, the practice is given to an estimated 100,000 Americans every year, including, in some states, children aged up to five years old.

Antidepressants can also cause long-term sexual dysfunction and severe withdrawal effects, the study shows.

The authors wrote: “With the World Health Association and the United Nations calling for a paradigm shift away from the medicalization of human distress, new evidence about millions of people struggling to get off antidepressants, and ongoing debate about the value and safety of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT),” and questions “biological psychiatry’s ‘medical model’ when we become sad or depressed.”

The authors debunk the theory that chemical imbalances cause depression and that treatments work by correcting underlying biological dysfunctions, triggered, for example, by a supposed genetic predisposition. They point that “there is no evidence that there are any neurochemical abnormalities in people with depression, let alone abnormalities that might cause depression.”

Many medical experts confirm there are no medical tests (X-rays, blood or urine tests, MRIs, etc.) that can prove a physical source for people’s emotional issues.[2]

Yet, the authors add, until January 2021, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) website advised: “Psychiatric medications can help correct imbalances in brain chemistry that are thought to be involved in some mental disorders.” This is not true.

The authors went on to say, “At present, most drugs are assumed to work according to a ‘disease-centered’ model of drug action, which proposes that they act on the biological processes assumed to underpin symptoms, in the same way as drugs do in most medical conditions.” However, “Like other psychiatric drugs, [antidepressants] are psychoactive substances that cross the blood-brain barrier and alter normal mental processes and behavior by changing the normal functioning of the brain.” [emphasis added]

“That long-term antidepressant use may lead to persistent brain modifications is also evidenced by the prolonged and severe withdrawal state they can induce…around 56% of people experience withdrawal effects after discontinuing antidepressants, and for 46% of those the effects are severe. In general, the longer someone takes an antidepressant, the more likely they are to experience a withdrawal reaction, and the more severe it will be.”

The study also discloses:

  • Hundreds of placebo-controlled trials suggest that antidepressants are marginally better than placebo at reducing depressive symptoms as measured by depression rating scales.
  • The majority of placebo-controlled trials have been conducted by the pharmaceutical industry, which has an investment in inflating results, but government-funded research also fails to confirm that antidepressants have beneficial effects.
  • SSRI antidepressants cause “sexual dysfunction in a large proportion of users, and more worryingly, some people report that this persists after stopping the drug.”
  • “The adverse effects of withdrawal can be so intolerable that some people trying to discontinue treatment have to reduce by tiny amounts over many years, and accumulating evidence suggests that the effects may even persist for months or years after the drugs are finally stopped.” 

Electroshocking Harms Mental Health

As is the case for antidepressants, the various biological deficits that are supposedly corrected by ECT have never been demonstrated, the authors continue. “[T]he story of ECT appears to be one of a biological intervention being claimed to correct biological deficits, but in reality having negative effects on healthy brains, some of which are misconstrued as signs of improvement.” 

A neutral observer would assume that the effects on the brain of repeatedly passing sufficient electricity through it to cause seizures are likely to be negative. ECT advocates, however, “tend to interpret abnormal brain changes caused by multiple electrocutions as beneficial, sometimes even linking them to reduced depression. They don’t consider that the changes might be negative or might be characterized as brain damage.”

The authors further discuss inequities in ECT studies:

  • In the 84 years since the first ECT there have only been 11 randomized placebo-controlled studies (RCTs) for its target diagnosis, depression, all before 1986. A recent review, involving Dr. Irving Kirsch, Associate Director of Placebo Studies at Harvard Medical School, highlighted the poor quality of the 11 studies.
  • Only four studies describe their processes of randomization and testing the blinding (procedure in which one or more parties in a trial are unaware of which participants are subjects of the treatment and those who are not, and helps to reduce bias). None convincingly demonstrate that they are double-blind. Five selectively report their findings. Only four report any ratings by patients. None assess Quality of Life. The studies are small, involving an average of 37 people.
  • No studies showed that ECT outperforms placebo beyond the end of the treatment period.
  • Nevertheless, all five meta-analyses of these flawed studies somehow conclude that ECT is effective.
  • The meta-analyses failed to identify any evidence that ECT prevents suicide, as often claimed. Numerous studies have found ECT recipients are more likely than other patients to kill themselves.
  • In a 2020 study, 14,810 ECT patients were 16 times more likely to try to kill themselves than a matched control group of 58,369. Other studies cited so-called reduce suicides were so small as to be negligible and were not even for depression.
  • A 2021 U.S. study found that 1,524 homeless US veterans who received ECT had made significantly more suicide attempts, at 30 days follow up, than 3,025 matched homeless veterans who hadn’t had ECT. The difference remained significant at 90 days and 1 year.
  • A review of 82 studies found that one in 39 ECT patients (25.8 per 1000) experience ‘major adverse cardiac events,’ the leading cause of ECT-related deaths.
  • As well as the short-term memory loss, which is widely acknowledged, between 12% and 55% of ECT recipients suffer persistent or permanent memory loss (typically defined as six months or longer).
  • Even the APA acknowledges that “ECT can result in persistent or permanent memory loss.”

The fact that discrepancies and bias in ECT studies are exposed draws strong opposition from advocates of the procedure, as doctors Read and Moncrieff point out. The advocates’ “defense” is to “shoot the messenger.”

“Researchers and ECT recipients who question the efficacy and highlight the adverse effects of ECT, are often publicly denigrated, by ECT advocates, as ‘anti-psychiatry ideologues’, ‘extremists’ ‘Scientologists’ and ‘non-medical zealots,’” or “part of a ‘guild war’ between professions.” [See CCHR’s report, Why Psychiatry Sees Itself as a Dying Industry.]

Read and Moncrieff continue: “The President and Chair of the International Society for ECT and Neurostimulation recently accused authors (including two ECT recipients) who had published some inconvenient findings of being ‘ideologically driven,’ of ‘spreading misinformation’ and of having ‘questionable motives.’”

Of note, the Church of Scientology established CCHR in 1969 as an independent organization, along with eminent professor of psychiatry, the late Dr. Thomas Szasz. CCHR comprises members of the church and people of various faiths or none at all. It has been outspoken against electroshock since its inception and has been pivotal in obtaining laws that either introduced safeguards such as informed consent to treatment (and the right to refuse it), as well as banning use of ECT on minors. In Australia, CCHR obtained a ban on deep sleep treatment (DST) that involved ECT and drugs, with criminal penalties, including jail, should anyone administer it. Indeed, in 2002, U.S. psychiatrist Richard Abrams, co-owner of Somatics LLC, which manufacturers an ECT device, wrote: “Absent Scientology there would hardly be an organized anti-ECT movement in the United States or anywhere else.”[3] This, from a “doctor,” who egregiously and misleadingly claims that ECT is about ten times safer than childbirth![4]

A Call for Alternatives

Read and Moncrief call for non-harmful alternatives: “We propose an alternative understanding that recognizes depression as an emotional and meaningful response to unwanted life events and circumstances.” This alternative view, they say, “is increasingly endorsed around the world, including by the United Nations, the World Health Organization and service users who have suffered negative consequences of physical treatments that modify brain functions in ways that are not well-understood.”

Furthermore, “believing you have a brain disease requiring medical intervention can be profoundly disempowering. It encourages people to view themselves as the victims of their biology, to adopt pessimistic views about recovery, increases self-stigma and discourages people from taking active steps to improve their situation.”

“Common sense,” they add, “suggests that the conditions needed to lead an emotionally balanced and fulfilling life, relatively free of major ongoing worry and distress, include a dependable income, housing, secure and rewarding employment, engaging social activities, and opportunities to form close relationships. Some people may need relationship counselling or family therapy, others support with employment or finances. People who feel severely depressed for a long time may simply need to be cared for, reassured with kindness and hope, reminded of times when they have felt good, and kept safe until they feel better, which they often do with time. There is no scientific evidence for some of these suggestions. We learn how to support our fellow humans through our life experience, through being cared for ourselves, and sometimes through art and literature.”

As the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Dr. Dainius P?ras, a Lithuanian psychiatrist, wrote: “Current mental health policies have been affected to a large extent by the asymmetry of power and biases because of the dominance of the biomedical model and biomedical interventions. This model has led…to the medicalization of normal reactions to life’s many pressures, including moderate forms of social anxiety, sadness, shyness, truancy and antisocial behavior.”

In 2021, the World Health Organization echoed these sentiments in its “Guidance on Community Mental Health Services” which says the biological model has resulted in “an over-diagnosis of human distress and over-reliance on psychotropic drugs to the detriment of psychosocial interventions.”[5] The document offers 22 examples of alternatives to drugs and electricity, Read and Moncrieff stress.

CCHR’s has a strong position against ECT; it wants it prohibited. Over 125,000 people have supported its online petition calling for the ban. Sign here.

References:

[1] John Read, Ph.D., Joanna Moncrief, M.D., “Depression: why drugs and electricity are not the answer,” Psychological Medicine, Cambridge University Press, 1 Feb. 2022, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/depression-why-drugs-and-electricity-are-not-the-answer/3197739131D795E326AE6913720E6E37

[2] “No Medical Tests Exist,” CCHR International, https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-disorders/no-medical-tests-exist/

[3] Richard Abrams, M.D., Electroconvulsive Therapy, Fourth Edition, (Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 10

[4] Richard Abrams, M.D., “The Mortality Rate with ECT,” Convulsive Therapy, 1997

[5] Jan Eastgate, “World Health Organization New Guidelines Are Vital To End Coercive Psychiatric Practices & Abuse,” CCHR International, 11 June 2021, https://www.cchrint.org/2021/06/11/world-health-organization-new-guidelines-are-vital-to-end-coercive-psychiatric-practices-abuse/

Ban ECT
http://www.banect.org/

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Mental Health Rights Policy To Prevent Patient Torture

Monday, January 31st, 2022

The word “compulsory” and the practice of coercion must be removed from any mental health policy. Effective mental healing should improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society, by restoring individuals to personal strength, ability, competence, responsibility, and spiritual wellbeing.

Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a mental health industry watchdog, launched a policy for governments to adopt to prevent abuse and coercive psychiatric practices that constitute torture. This is based on reports and guidelines issued by the World Health Organization (WHO—guidance on community mental health services) and United Nations representatives for health and against torture. In 2020, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture presented a report on “psychological torture” to the UN Human Rights Council, with the strongest condemnation to date of involuntary psychiatric interventions.

Currently, New Zealand is in the process of transforming its mental health law away from coercive and compulsory incarceration and treatment and towards a human rights approach—something CCHR says is urgently needed throughout the United States and worldwide. Recently in the U.S., the mental health system has been rocked with allegations of staff physical, sexual and chemical assaults of patients, especially children and teens in for-profit behavioral facilities, including restraint use leading to death. In 2021, fourteen staff from behavioral hospitals faced criminal proceedings over patient abuse and deaths.

Yet, U.S. psychiatrists have called for the power to increase their rights to involuntarily detain and treat patients, based on the arbitrary argument that persons are a danger to themselves or others. Such arguments fly in the face of the March 2020 UN Special Rapporteur on Torture report on “psychological torture” presented to the UN Human Rights Council, berating involuntary psychiatric interventions based on the supposed “best interests” of a person or on “medical necessity.” Such interventions, the report says, “generally involve highly discriminatory and coercive attempts at controlling or ‘correcting’ the victim’s personality, behavior or choices and almost always inflict severe pain or suffering…such practices may well amount to torture.”

WHO states that forced treatment is not proven to prevent violent practices yet are relied upon “despite the lack of evidence that they offer any benefits, and the significant evidence that they lead to physical and psychological harm and even death.”

Psychiatrists and psychologists are unable to predict whether a person is a danger to oneself or others as this relies upon subjective opinion, not science. “Violence is not a diagnosis nor is it a disease. Potential to do harm is not a symptom or a sign of mental illness,” and cannot be scientifically assessed.

Recommendations

  • Prohibition of all ElectroConvulsive Therapy (ECT) and psychosurgery, with criminal penalties to those administering these in violation of the law.
  • Informed Consent must be obtained with all major treatment risks documented in writing; the person informed that there are diverse opinions and disagreements about the medical legitimacy of psychiatric diagnoses which cannot be determined with physical-medical tests; the patient has the right to refuse treatment and revoke consent at any time, as well has the right to all available alternatives.
  • Abolish mechanical and chemical restraints, with criminal penalties if used and resulting in harm or death of the patient.
  • Proper medical testing to be conducted as part of the patient assessment, ruling out underlying and undiagnosed physical conditions that may manifest in “psychiatric” symptoms.
  • Facilities established to safely withdraw patients from psychotropic drugs.
Forced Psychiatry is Legislated Violence

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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.

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Something is Rotten in Canton

Monday, July 19th, 2021

Let’s Electroshock Children Who Misbehave

In March of 2020 the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) banned the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts from using electric shock devices on their autistic and other mentally troubled children. In July of 2021 a federal appeals court removed the ban. The school is once again electro shocking about 60 students a day.

The school administers electric skin shocks in a form of “aversion therapy” for aggressive or self-injurious behavior. School staff trigger a shock to a child by using a remote control that zaps children with electric current when they misbehave. The school calls this a “medical device.” Since 1987 a state court must determine that such forced treatment is appropriate.

This electrical stimulation device delivers a powerful and painful electric shock to the wearer’s skin in an effort to punish. This school is the only facility in the country that uses coercive electric shock therapy to “treat” individuals who severely self-injure or are aggressive.

The FDA finally recognized in March 2020 (after 20 years) that these devices “present substantial psychological and physical risks and, in fact, can worsen underlying symptoms—while leading to heightened anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Unfortunately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned the FDA ban on July 6, 2021, stating that the ban was a regulation of the practice of medicine, which is outside the FDA’s area of authority.

The History of Abuse

In April 2016, the FDA first proposed banning electrical stimulation devices for self-injurious or aggressive behavior.

In 2018, the media reported that the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center would be allowed to continue administering electric shocks to its special needs students after a judge ruled the procedure conformed to the “accepted standard of care,” in spite of the practice being condemned by disability rights groups and the ACLU.

On December 3, 2018, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of The Organization of American States published a Precautionary Measure calling for the school to immediately cease electroshocking special needs children as a disciplinary measure.

In March 2020 the FDA finally determined that the devices presented a substantial and unreasonable risk to self-injurious and aggressive patients, justifying banning the devices for that purpose.

The Appeals Court

The appeals court examined the question, “Does the FDA have legal authority to ban an otherwise legal device from a particular use?”

The court concluded that current law prohibits the FDA from regulating the practice of medicine, and therefore it vacated the FDA’s rule banning electrical stimulation devices for self-injurious and aggressive behavior. There was one dissenting opinion; the Chief Judge found in favor of the FDA. [Read the full court opinion here.]

Of course, the lie in the argument is that electro shocking children is “practicing medicine.” In fact it is torture, not medicine.

The Case Against Torture

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment has remarked that Electro Convulsive Treatment (ECT) amounts to torture. The World Health Organization (WHO) has also stated that there are no indications for the use of ECT on minors. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) calls for a ban on “forced treatment.”

Granted that ECT is more severe than electric skin shocks, just have someone force you to stick your finger into an electric wall socket and tell us that this is not torture.

“Disguising social control as medical treatment is a deceit which conceals an abuse.” This is a de facto abuse of power, as it seeks to limit and control the individual instead of helping the individual to get better and improve their conditions in life.

In the United Nations July 24, 2018 Annual Report of the High Commissioner “Mental health and human rights,” it states, “States should ensure that all health care and services, including all mental health care and services, are based on the free and informed consent of the individual concerned, and that legal provisions and policies permitting the use of coercion and forced interventions, including involuntary hospitalization and institutionalization, the use of restraints, psychosurgery, forced medication, and other forced measures aimed at correcting or fixing an actual or perceived impairment, including those allowing for consent or authorization by a third party, are repealed. States should reframe and recognize these practices as constituting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and as amounting to discrimination against users of mental health services, persons with mental health conditions and persons with psychosocial disabilities.”

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, formally adopted on December 10, 1948 states, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

CCHR’s own Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights, written in 1969, states these rights, among others:
“The right to refuse any treatment the patient considers harmful.”
“No person shall be given psychiatric or psychological treatment against his or her will.”

Sign the petition to ban electroshock here.

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Psychiatry is Not a Sustainable Industry

Monday, March 8th, 2021

Reference:
United Nations Promoting Sustainable Development

Resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2015
“Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development“

Sustainable: Of, relating to, or being a method or lifestyle for using resources so that the resources can be maintained and continued, and are not depleted or permanently damaged.

[from Old French sustenir (French: soutenir), from Latin sustineo, sustinere, from sub– (under) + teneo (hold, uphold, possess, guard, maintain)]

The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and their 169 associated targets adopted in 2015 and accepted by all Member States seek to realize the human rights of all and balance economic, social and environmental factors towards peace and prosperity for all.

To this end we examine some of the existing factors which block or inhibit the realization of these goals, and which must be eliminated so that the goals can be achieved in practice.

SDG 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global
Partnership for Sustainable Development.

Target 17.16: Enhance the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in all countries, in particular developing countries.

How Psychiatry Obstructs Target 17.16

It should be obvious by now that psychiatry is not a sustainable industry, neither by definition nor by example.

The main resource in consideration here is people, the most critical building blocks of society. Yet psychiatry has no cures, and depends on damaging their patients to continue in business.

We see the globalization of biomedical psychiatry as undemocratic, unsustainable and without a clear ethical focus.

Green Mental Health Care

“Green Mental Health Care is based on the preservation and treatment of the mind and body (for they are not separate functions) using non-toxic, non-addictive, and non-invasive strategies that produces good mental health. Green Mental Health Care has not only proven to be superior in patient outcomes than any other treatment method, including the use of psychiatric drugs, but it achieves the patient’s health goals at a fraction of the cost while saving them from the life-threatening health risks associated with psychiatric drugs.“

Unsustainable Psychiatric Practices

“Unsustainable prescription drug costs will ultimately create pressures on health systems and insurers to reduce spending in other areas or to decrease benefits.“

ElectroConvulsive Therapy (ECT), or shock therapy, is a highly lucrative but damaging psychiatric practice. The purpose of shock treatment is to create brain damage. This brain damage is what brings about the memory loss and learning disability, as well as the spatial and temporal disorientation which always follows shock treatments. All physical damage done to the brain by ECT is permanent and irreversible. There is evidence that the damage, once begun by ECT, is progressive and feeds on itself, leading to further brain deterioration, including physical shrinkage of the brain and a shortening of the life of the victim. This barbaric “treatment” is currently being pushed on an unsuspecting and vulnerable patient population for major depression, but in reality it creates a patient for life due to this brain damage. Sign the petition to Ban ECT.

With mental health treatment costing up to 300% more than general medical treatment, spiraling costs are unavoidable when mental health care is mandated.

Psychiatrists and psychologists proclaim a worldwide epidemic of mental health problems and urge massive funding increases as the only solution. Yet Community Mental Health programs have been an expensive and colossal failure, creating homelessness, drug addiction, crime and unemployment all over the world.

Whenever a “mental patient” commits an act of senseless violence, psychiatrists invariably blame the tragedy on the person’s failure to continue their medication. Such incidents are used to justify mandated community treatment and involuntary commitment laws. However, statistics and facts show it is psychiatric drugs themselves that can create the very violence or mental incompetence they are prescribed to treat.

The end result of psychiatric treatment is not a cured patient, returned to society as a well-adjusted, functioning contributor, but rather a person with the same or worse mental symptoms, told they must remain on debilitating psychiatric drugs for life, because psychiatrists know of no other cure.

“Biomedical psychiatry” has yet to validate a single psychiatric diagnosis as a disease, or as anything neurological, biological, chemically imbalanced or genetic. Decades of psychiatric monopoly over mental health has only lead to upwardly spiraling mental illness statistics and continuously escalating funding demands — the very definition of unsustainable.

The claim that only increased funding will cure the problems of psychiatry has lost its ring of truth. Psychiatry and psychology should be held accountable for the funds already given them, and irrefutably and scientifically prove the physical existence of mental disorders they claim should be treated and covered by insurance in the same way as physical diseases are.

The many critical challenges facing societies today reflect the vital need to strengthen individuals through workable, viable and humanitarian alternatives to harmful psychiatric options.

Psychiatric fraud and abuse must be eradicated so that SDG 17 can occur.

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Eroding Justice—Psychiatry’s Corruption of Law

Monday, January 4th, 2021

Reference:
United Nations Promoting Sustainable Development

Resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2015
“Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development“

Sustainable: Of, relating to, or being a method or lifestyle for using resources so that the resources can be maintained and continued, and are not depleted or permanently damaged.

[from Old French sustenir (French: soutenir), from Latin sustineo, sustinere, from sub– (under) + teneo (hold, uphold, possess, guard, maintain)]

The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and their 169 associated targets adopted in 2015 and accepted by all Member States seek to realize the human rights of all and balance economic, social and environmental factors towards peace and prosperity for all.

To this end we examine some of the existing factors which block or inhibit the realization of these goals, and which must be eliminated so that the goals can be achieved in practice.

SDG 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.

Target 16.3: Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all.

How Psychiatry Obstructs Target 16.3

When psychiatry entered the justice and penal systems, it did so under the subterfuge that it understood Man, that it knew not only what made Man act as he did, but that it knew how to improve his lot. This was a lie. Psychiatry has had opportunity to prove itself. The experiment has been a miserable failure.

In the 1940’s, psychiatry’s leaders proclaimed their intention to infiltrate the field of the law and bring about the “re–interpretation and eventually eradication of the concept of right and wrong.” And they did, with the consequence that today, because of their influence, the justice system is failing.

The psychiatric “insanity defense” and its derivatives have done the most damage. The psychiatric industry jumping on the “not guilty by reason of insanity” (NGRI) bandwagon has lead to a massive erosion of public confidence in the justice system’s ability to mete out swift and equitable justice.

Psychiatric “expert” witnesses are widely criticized for providing testimony to suit their clients’ purposes.

Psychiatry, using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), has warped the justice system to protect criminals instead of protecting society from criminals.

With each new failure to rehabilitate the criminally insane, psychiatry merely asks for more money since they are unable to cure anyone.

A major part of the “treatment” for prison inmates is a regimen of powerful psychotropic drugs, despite numerous studies showing that aggression and violence are tied to their use.

Because of the complete lack of scientific validity, legal and medical experts recommend eliminating psychiatric and psychological testimony from the courts.

Psychiatric fraud and abuse must be eradicated so that SDG 16 can occur.

Our Criminal Justice System

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Psychiatrists: An Invasive Alien Species?

Monday, November 23rd, 2020

Reference:
United Nations Promoting Sustainable Development
Resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2015
“Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development“

Sustainable: Of, relating to, or being a method or lifestyle for using resources so that the resources can be maintained and continued, and are not depleted or permanently damaged.

[from Old French sustenir (French: soutenir), from Latin sustineo, sustinere, from sub– (under) + teneo (hold, uphold, possess, guard, maintain)]

The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and their 169 associated targets adopted in 2015 and accepted by all Member States seek to realize the human rights of all and balance economic, social and environmental factors towards peace and prosperity for all.

To this end we examine some of the existing factors which block or inhibit the realization of these goals, and which must be eliminated so that the goals can be achieved in practice.

SDG 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and
reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

Target 15.8: By 2020, introduce measures to prevent the introduction and significantly reduce the impact of invasive alien species on land and water ecosystems and control or eradicate the priority species.

How Psychiatry Obstructs Target 15.8

While calling psychiatrists an invasive alien species may be facetious, it highlights the abhorrent characteristics of the psychiatric industry.

The role of a true scientist is to make a better world for all men and women. Psychiatry claims it is a science, yet its actions clearly indicate otherwise.

Psychiatry, from its outset, has had two main goals: the degradation and dominance of Man, and the harvesting of government billions.

Psychiatry breaks the most basic laws of humanity. Psychiatry itself is an abuse of human rights.

— Psychiatry promotes easy-seizure involuntary commitment laws, clearly an affront to human rights.

— Psychiatrists developed the racial purity ideology used by Hitler which lead to the Nazi euthanasia program, and they ran the Nazi concentration camps.

— Psychiatrists around the world have used incarceration of patients for political reasons, to suppress the rights of political dissidents.

— Psychiatric mind-altering drugs are used to create terrorists.

— Psychiatric fraud is rampant. The United States loses up to $40 billion annually due to fraudulent practices in the mental health industry.

— Between 10% and 25% of mental health practitioners sexually abuse their patients. To cover up their crime, psychiatrists have used drugs or electroshock in an effort to eliminate the patient’s memory of the rape.

There is more. CCHR has been documenting psychiatry’s human rights abuses since 1969. Psychiatry might as well be an invasive alien species, since it certainly does not represent decent human beings.

Psychiatric fraud and abuse must be eradicated so that SDG 15 can occur.

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How psychiatry Harms Marine Life

Monday, September 28th, 2020

Reference:
United Nations Promoting Sustainable Development
Resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2015 “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development“

Sustainable: Of, relating to, or being a method or lifestyle for using resources so that the resources can be maintained and continued, and are not depleted or permanently damaged.

[from Old French sustenir (French: soutenir), from Latin sustineo, sustinere, from sub– (under) + teneo (hold, uphold, possess, guard, maintain)]

The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and their 169 associated targets adopted in 2015 and accepted by all Member States seek to realize the human rights of all and balance economic, social and environmental factors towards peace and prosperity for all.

To this end we examine some of the existing factors which block or inhibit the realization of these goals, and which must be eliminated so that the goals can be achieved in practice.

SDG 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
Target 14.1: By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution.

How Psychiatry Obstructs Target 14.1
We addressed this largely in SDG Target 6.3 when we discussed the fact that pharmaceuticals are increasingly prevalent in our drinking water. Now we see that the same problem can occur for planetary water as well, since the oceans and marine life are susceptible to psychiatric drug contamination as well as our drinking water supply.

Some relevant quotes:
“Pharmaceuticals are emitted from our bodies, homes, and factories, entering waterways and accumulating in fish, bugs, mollusks, crustaceans, birds, and warm-blooded animals. … But medicinal compounds have also been detected in remote environments, imbuing surface waters even in Antarctica.”

And another relevant quote:
“And there’s a growing pile of evidence suggesting this ‘soup’ of antidepressants and their break-down products is taking its toll on marine life.”

Just Google “psychiatric drugs in the ocean” for many more quotes.

The truth about psychiatric drugs is that their bad effects harm more than just people. But lest we forget, harmful and addictive drugs are themselves only the side effects of the more serious issue: The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior or study problems as “diseases.” 

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

The WHO

The World Health Organization, created by the United Nations in 1948, funded in part by $553 million dollars annually from the United States government (roughly 31% of the WHO’s budget), is a prime offender in terms of psychiatric abuse.

[Note: On April 14, 2020, the President of the United States suspended U.S. contributions to the World Health Organization pending an investigation by the Administration of the organization’s failed response to the COVID-19 outbreak.]

In spite of any efforts that WHO and the UN may take throughout the world, it remains that the mental disorders section of the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD), like the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), both used as the final word on sanity, insanity, and so-called mental illness, are used by psychiatrists to diagnose fraudulent mental illnesses leading to massive over-drugging with harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs which are finding their way into the marine environment with disastrous results.

Psychiatric fraud and abuse must be eradicated so that SDG 14 can occur.

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How psychiatry Usurps Climate Change Planning

Monday, August 17th, 2020

Reference:
United Nations Promoting Sustainable Development
Resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2015 “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development“

Sustainable: Of, relating to, or being a method or lifestyle for using resources so that the resources can be maintained and continued, and are not depleted or permanently damaged.

[from Old French sustenir (French: soutenir), from Latin sustineo, sustinere, from sub– (under) + teneo (hold, uphold, possess, guard, maintain)]

The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and their 169 associated targets adopted in 2015 and accepted by all Member States seek to realize the human rights of all and balance economic, social and environmental factors towards peace and prosperity for all.

To this end we examine some of the existing factors which block or inhibit the realization of these goals, and which must be eliminated so that the goals can be achieved in practice.

SDG 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
Target 13.2: Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning.

How Psychiatry Obstructs Target 13.2
The psycho-pharmaceutical industry has jumped full-time onto the climate change bandwagon. Scholarly articles are being published claiming that climate change affects mental health, along with the typical cries to fund more research, prescribe more antidepressants, and prepare for the worst.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) does not lack for possible disorders that can be tied to some climate change disaster for which antidepressants can be prescribed.

It used to be called “Seasonal Affective Disorder” (SAD). Although this is no longer classified as a unique disorder, it can still be diagnosed as a “mood disorder with a seasonal pattern.” SAD is considered a subtype of major depression or bipolar disorder. An example of a SAD diagnosis might be “Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent Episode, Moderate, With Seasonal Pattern”.

Here we have the “dangerous environment” in full bloom. Wherever psychiatry intervenes, the environment becomes more dangerous, more unsettled, more disturbed. A dangerous environment only persists if we fail to spread a safe environment across the world. What makes a dangerous environment? Confusion, conflict and upset.

The psychiatrists who promote a dangerous environment make it seem as threatening as possible so that they can profit from it. How do you counter this? You stop spreading the chaos and spread the truth instead. Behind the truth comes the calm. You may still need technology to handle climate change, but you don’t need antidepressant drugs to do so.

The issue is not “is there or is there not climate change?” The issue is, get rid of the psychiatrists who are promoting and profiting from the confusion.

Psychiatric fraud and abuse must be eradicated so that SDG 13 can occur.

Climate Change

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