Citizens Commission on Human Rights’ exhibit exposes the history to the present day of harmful and racist practices in the mental health system that constitute human rights violations, and calls for laws to ban harmful practices, in line with international human rights standards.
by CCHR National Affairs Office
Human rights abuses in mental healthcare were the focus of a global traveling exhibit by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an international mental health industry watchdog. The exhibit was displayed recently at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, in conjunction with the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference.
The exhibit brings to light the history to the present day of human rights abuses from psychiatric practices. Today, those practices include forcibly admitting people – even children – to psychiatric facilities, forcing them to take harmful drugs against their will, and subjecting them to seclusion and restraints, which have caused injury and death. Mental health patients can even be subjected to involuntary electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, or electroshock).
Coercive mental health practices violate international human rights standards, with the World Health Organization and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights calling for an end to all involuntary mental health treatment. CCHR advocates for state and federal laws to eliminate coercive practices and ban electroshock.
At the exhibit opening ceremony, Dr. E. Gail Anderson Holness, Pastor at Adams Inspirational AME Church in Washington, DC, and former Faith Based Outreach Coordinator at the DC Department of Behavioral Health emphasized, “We believe mental health is a human rights issue,” also adding, “We support recovery because recovery is possible.”
Adrienne L. Schaffer Esq. (Col. Ret. USA), Founder and Executive Director of the Military Children’s Six Foundation and former US Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps Officer, talked about her organization advocating for the well-being of military children and youth, as well as educating and empowering them to self-advocate, stand up for others, and ultimately take on rights-based leadership roles. These rights could include human rights in the field of mental health.
“As these young individuals mature into roles of leadership or influence, whether within their home countries or abroad, they can act as change agents and ambassadors for human and child rights,” she said.
Joseph Cecala, a Chicago civil rights attorney, fights in court for his clients’ right to make their own medical decisions. “The most important issue that confronts society today is the human rights of people that are in the mental health system,“ he said. “It is a failed philosophy that needs to change.”
The damage caused by coerced mental health treatment was the reason behind the 2023 call by the World Health Organization and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights for nations to end all forced mental health treatment, the organizations saying that coercive practices “violate the right to be protected from torture or cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.”
Facts presented in the CCHR exhibit detail the sordid history of human rights violations in psychiatric practices, including brain-damaging psychosurgery and electroshock, and reveal the prime role of psychiatrists in instigating and perpetuating the systemic racism still ingrained in today’s mental health system. In 2021, both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association admitted to long histories of racial abuse and to the systemic racism still present in their practices.
Many convention visitors viewing the exhibit reached out to CCHR for help in protecting mental health human rights in their states. Many had their own distressful stories of family members or friends who were harmed in the mental health system.
“Damaging and potentially fatal procedures that are passed off as mental health treatment must stop,” said Anne Goedeke, president of the CCHR National Affairs Office. “CCHR is dedicated to ending abusive psychiatric treatments and practices and restoring human rights to mental healthcare.”