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WHAT DOES CCHR DO?

Thousands of individuals contact CCHR each year to report psychiatric abuse and criminality, including false imprisonment, hospital fraud, sexual abuse and inhumane treatment and conditions in psychiatric institutions. CCHR documents these reports and helps the abused individual file criminal or other complaints with the proper authorities. It also conducts investigations into wider psychiatric issues, such as insurance fraud, high death rates in institutions, and the fraudulent labeling of millions of children as “mentally disordered” and drugging them.

During the past decade, CCHR’s investigations have led to the prosecution of over a thousand psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health workers. This has prompted legislators and insurance companies to withdraw funding from criminal psychiatric practices and to pass laws protecting individuals from psychiatry.

Through CCHR’s efforts, thousands of psychiatric victims have been rescued, patients have regained legal and civil rights, mental health acts have outlawed the arbitrary use of electroshock and psychosurgery and banned these savage practices on children, and legislation has been enacted to ensure psychiatric rape of patients is dealt with as a criminal offense. Many hundreds of survivors of psychiatric treatment have been compensated tens of millions of dollars for the damage they suffered because of psychiatry.

WHAT IS CCHR’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY?

The Church of Scientology established CCHR in 1969 as an independent organization to clean up the abusive field of mental healing. It comprises members of the Church of Scientology and people of many other faiths and cultural beliefs. Scientologists are not unique in their view that psychiatry is destructive. People from all walks of life are concerned about the damaging impact of psychiatry on society. Thanks to their work with CCHR to do something effective about it, today there are more than 120 laws that now protect individuals against psychiatric abuse.

CCHR’s Board of Advisors—called Commissioners—include prominent doctors, lawyers, artists, educators, professionals and civil and human rights representatives who see it as their duty to “expose and help abolish any and all physically damaging practices in the field of mental health.”

CCHR is proud to have been founded by the Church of Scientology, which has an impressive history of human rights achievements. CCHR members work closely with the Church’s social reform or human rights departments.

WHY DO YOU CALL PSYCHIATRY AN INDUSTRY OF DEATH?

More Americans have died in psychiatric institutions than American soldiers killed in battle in all wars since 1776. Hundreds of children have committed suicide in the United States alone because of antidepressants that the Food and Drug Administration now recognizes cause violence and suicide. The FDA has also issued warnings that stimulants prescribed to children can cause hostility and psychosis. Eight out of the 13 school shooters were taking psychiatric drugs at the time of the crime. (The medical records of the other five are sealed.)

And do you know that electroshock is still administered today to 2 million people worldwide, with about 10,000 deaths every year? That’s why psychiatry is an industry of death.

DON’T PEOPLE HAVE A CHEMICAL IMBALANCE THAT CAUSES MENTAL ILLNESS?

That’s another of psychiatry’s lies. There are no studies that can confirm that a chemical imbalance in the brain exists causing mental problems. This theory was invented to sell antidepressants, the sales of which have now reached $14 billion a year in the U.S. The psychiatric heads of the American Psychiatric Association, including its past president, Steven Sharfstein, admitted there is no test to determine a chemical imbalance. And an article in The New York Times found that despite 30 years of research, no brain scan has been able to determine the physical cause of any mental problem. As there is no scientific evidence to prove the chemical imbalance theory, the prescription of psychiatric drugs for something that does not exist is fraudulent and dangerous—similar to prescribing chemotherapy to someone who doesn’t have cancer.

DO YOU THINK PSYCHIATRY SHOULD BE ABOLISHED?

Yes, because it openly states that it doesn’t know the cause of so–called mental disorders, hasn’t a clue how to cure them, yet demands, and gets, billions of dollars each year to force damaging “treatments” on people. It claims to be a science, but not one of its disorders can be medically or scientifically validated. Psychiatrists rely on a fraudulent diagnostic system based on opinion about people’s behavior and use this to strip away people’s rights.

Psychiatry has not only failed but has also destroyed the lives of millions of people. Further, at least 10 percent of its members admit to having sexually assaulted their patients - that’s about 260,000 rape victims worldwide. If you spoke to the tens of thousands of psychiatric victims that CCHR has, you’d want psychiatry abolished too.

WHAT DO YOU DO IF A MENTALLY ILL PERSON IS VIOLENT?

The person who is violent or threatens violence must never be “treated” by psychiatrists. If a person commits a dangerous offense, criminal statutes exist to address this. Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, says: “All criminal behavior should be controlled by means of criminal law, from the administration of which psychiatrists ought to be excluded.”

Studies demonstrate that psychiatric predictions of dangerousness are no better than flipping a coin. Psychiatrists cannot “cure” what is essentially criminal or anti-social conduct.

The foundation of justice is based on the idea that each man is accountable for his actions. But each year thousands of criminals are excused of the most heinous crimes based on psychiatric testimony in courts. This undermines a key tool that society uses to protect itself from violent crime.

If someone is violent or breaks the law, he or she should be dealt with the way all people are who do such things. We don’t need psychiatrists for that.

Commitment laws have been exploited for every wrong reason: financial, sexual, political, business profit, inheritance and even governmental secrecy. They are a deprivation of human and constitutional rights. Once committed—and declared incompetent—the person can lose the right to vote, drive a car, join the military, control their financial and business affairs and even practice their profession. The victim is also subjected to physically harmful treatments from which they may never recover.

There would be public outcry if someone ran amok in the street, grabbing citizens because he disapproved of their behavior, locking them up and submitting them to mind-altering drugs or electric shock. The perpetrator would be criminally charged and jailed for many years. But because the perpetrator is a psychiatrist, his brutal acts are cloaked in terms such as “treatment,” “mental health care,” or “preventing the person from doing harm,” and are sanctioned by law. Consequently, the systematic social and mental crippling of millions of people each year is ignored.

Imagine the alternative: mental hospitals as places of rest. People would not be assaulted with drugs and shock. They could rest and receive proper medical help. People would be more approachable about being helped. But under the current system, forcing anyone into a mental hospital is imprisonment masquerading as protection. All coercive mental health practices should be illegal. Like slavery before it, involuntary hospitalization should be abolished.

For more information, download and read the CCHR information letter Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment: A Crack In The Door Of Constitutional Freedoms.