STATE-OF-THE-ART TOURING EXHIBIT TARGETS PSYCHIATRY AS AN “INDUSTRY OF DEATH”

With public distrust of psychiatry mounting—and government agency warnings about psychiatric drugs at an all-time high—a new exhibit in St. Louis shows that it could get much worse.

St. Louis – Denouncing the fact that internationally more than 100,000 patients die each year in psychiatric institutions and an estimated 15,000 American children have died as a consequence of taking psychiatric drugs, the St. Louis Chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) launched a “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” exhibition today in University City (7900 Olive Blvd., Westover Shopping Center). Mary “One” Johnson helped open the exhibit which features 15 display panels that incorporate audio-visual presentations depicting human rights abuses by psychiatry and carry statements from health professionals, academics, legal and human rights experts, and victims of psychiatric brutalities. The exhibit also addresses a federal plan that would screen the state’s children for “mental illness” that could lead to a threefold increase in the number of children being subjected to the devastating effects of psychotropic drugs.

The 185-foot, state-of-the-art exhibit exposes psychiatry as an industry driven entirely by profit. It traces the origins of psychiatry, the role psychiatrists have played in the oppression of blacks and minorities, the roots of their eugenics programs and the pivotal part they played in the Holocaust. It also reveals how psychiatric drugs are behind gun-toting teens today going on shooting sprees, and how millions of federal dollars allocated to screen all 52 million American schoolchildren could increase both child deaths and acts of school violence. People touring the exhibit today signed a petition opposing funding and implementation of mental health screening in schools.

“The touring exhibit shows psychiatry’s deadly ‘treatments’ in graphic detail,” warns CCHR St. Louis chapter spokesperson, Moritz Farbstein, who listed out psychosurgery, shock treatment, deadly restraint and the prevalent inhumane conditions of psychiatric facilities, and the forced drugging of children as young as six months old. “Most importantly, though, this exhibit provides practical guidance for lawmakers, educators, doctors, human rights advocates and private citizens so they can take action in their own spheres to bring psychiatry to account for their abuses.”

The touring “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” exhibit theme is patterned after a recently opened museum by the same name at the Los Angeles headquarters of Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a psychiatric watchdog group with 300 chapters worldwide. Co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, CCHR investigates and exposes psychiatric violations of human rights.

Mr. Farbstein said, “Our exhibit shows very clearly how, in the name of ‘help,’ psychiatry, in fact, destroys lives.”

A sampling of current statistics and facts shown in the exhibit bears this out:

·        20 million children worldwide are taking psychiatric drugs, including 10 million in the United States, which can cause suicide, hostility, violence, mania, strokes, heart attacks, diabetes and death. 

·        Antipsychotic drug prescriptions for children increased fivefold between 1993 and 2002 in the United States, during which time 45 children died from the drugs.

·        In recent years, stimulant drugs have caused 19 child deaths, although as only 1% to 10% of drug adverse reactions are reported, the death toll from children taking antipsychotic drugs, stimulants and antidepressants could be as high as 15,000.

·        10% of American teens (2.3 million) are abusing psychiatric stimulants.

·        More than 100,000 patients die each year in psychiatric institutions around the world.

·        Psychiatrists are using electroshock, drugs and other barbaric means to torture political dissidents.

·        Internationally, psychiatrists kill up to 10,000 people each year with their use of electroshock—460 volts of electricity sent searing through the brain.  Three-quarters of all electroshock victims are women.

·        Psychiatrists and psychologists have raped 250,000 women.  Studies show that 10 to 25 percent of psychiatrists sexually assault their patients; of every 20 of these victims one is likely to be a minor.

Public interested in touring the exhibit (daily through January 19) can contact CCHR by phone at (314) 727-8307, by e-mail at CCHRSTL@CCHRSTL.org or visit www.CCHRSTL.org.