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INTRODUCTION
Watchdog for Mental Health
In 1969, the Citizens
Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) was established to investigate and expose
psychiatric violations of human rights and to clean up the field of mental
healing. For well over a century, psychiatric theory had held that because
neither spiritual matters nor the mind could be measured with physical
instruments, they did not exist and had no place in mental health treatment.
Typical psychiatric practice meant that patients were treated like animals�they
were stripped of their legal rights and possessions, brutalized and warehoused
in degrading conditions. Inmates were terrorized with electric shock treatment,
often as punishment and without consent. Psychiatric lobotomies and other
psychosurgical procedures destroyed minds and lives. Powerful neuroleptic
(nerve seizing) drugs caused irreversible brain and nervous system damage
making patients sluggish, apathetic and less alert. Furthermore, patients
were assaulted and sexually abused�all under the guise of �therapy.� Any
claim of a scientific basis was a hoax.
Consider the story of Hollywood actress Frances Farmer, who over a six-year
period in the 1940s appeared in 18 films, three Broadway plays and 30
major radio shows, all before the age of 27. Then, suffering from a series
of failed relationships and addicted to amphetamines for weight control,
Farmer was admitted to a Washington State psychiatric hospital. Raped
by orderlies, prostituted by hospital staff to soldiers from a nearby
military base, locked in a cage, subjected to electro- and insulin shock
treatments, given ice-cold �shock� baths, powerful, debilitating drugs
and psychosurgery� Frances Farmer�s personality and career were destroyed.
Unlike many, Farmer survived and was able to tell of her experiences:
�Never console yourself into believing that the terror has passed, for
it looms as large and as evil today as it did in the despicable era of
Bedlam. But I must relate the horrors as I recall them, in the hope that
some force for mankind might be moved to relieve forever the unfortunate
creatures who are still imprisoned in the back wards of decaying institutions.�
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is that force.
Inspired by visionary humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard�who identified the abuse
inherent in psychiatry�s acts when he said, �There must not be any influential
group dedicated to man�s degradation,��CCHR today is the preeminent international
psychiatric watchdog.
Established by the Church of Scientology as an independent social reform
group and co-founded by Dr. Thomas Szasz, professor emeritus of psychiatry,
CCHR is responsible for many hundreds of international reforms gained
through testimony before legislative hearings, its own public inquiries
into psychiatric abuse, and its work with media, law enforcement and public
officials.
This publication details some of the investigations, major changes and
reforms CCHR has helped to bring about. Through CCHR�s diligence, thousands
of victims of abuse have been rescued; patients have regained their legal
and civil rights; mental health acts around the world have prohibited
the arbitrary use of electroshock treatment, psychosurgery and banned
deep sleep (narcosis) treatment and insulin shock. Legislation now exists
to ensure psychiatric rape of patients is dealt with through the criminal
courts, and many hundreds damaged by psychiatric �treatment� have been
compensated.
Today, psychiatrists� power to coerce parents into putting their children
on very dangerous psychotropic drugs condemns us to a deepening drug culture
and the subversion of the family unit. Seventeen million children worldwide
are prescribed antidepressants that cause violent and suicidal behavior.
This includes children younger than one year old who are now being prescribed
mind-altering drugs. Millions more of our young are prescribed a stimulant
that is more potent than cocaine. Therefore, CCHR�s job remains formidable
and its watchdog role of preventing human rights abuses all the more vital.
For many psychiatric victims, CCHR is their only hope, the one group willing
to listen that will not attribute their very serious complaints
to the �delusions� of �mental illness.� Through CCHR�s work, countless
lives have been saved or salvaged from the personal degradation that follows
in the wake of psychiatric treatment. Today, CCHR proudly continues its
watchdog role with over 130 chapters in more than 30 countries numbers
that keep growing year after year in what is nothing less than a global
fight for the dignity and decency of man. More vital than ever, CCHR�s
work will only be complete when psychiatry�s fraudulent practices are
eliminated and it is held accountable for its harmful treatments and human
rights violations.
Sincerely,
Jan Eastgate President,
Citizens Commission on
Human Rights International
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