Since CCHR�s earliest days, it has sought to bring the full weight of the law�and public pressure through the media�to bear on psychiatry�s unrelenting violations of civil rights, and to expose and decry the abuses it precipitates.

CHAPTER ONE The Fight for Basic Rights

By depicting those they label mentally ill as a danger to themselves or others, psychiatrists have convinced governments and courts that depriving such individuals of their liberty, is mandatory for the safety of all concerned. Wherever psychiatry has succeeded in this campaign, extreme abuses of human rights have resulted. One particularly odious attempt to give psychiatrists control over the American populace was made in 1956.

In January of that year, the U.S. Congress quietly and unanimously passed an Alaskan Mental Health Act, drawn up and lobbied for by the top of U.S. psychiatry, which earmarked one million acres of land in Alaska to be fenced off and set aside for a psychiatric facility where any person in the country could be committed involuntarily by a psychiatrist.

L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Scientology religion, likened this nefarious psychiatric plan to a Siberia-type camp for anyone to be committed against their will and dubbed it �Siberia USA!� He spearheaded a coalition of members of the Church of Scientology and civil rights groups who launched an intense campaign against this plan to legalize a wholesale violation of human rights, resulting in the bill�s defeat in the Senate. For years afterward, however, psychiatrists still referred to the language of the �Siberia� bill as their preferred model legislation for involuntary commitment.

In 1966, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. Article 9 states: �Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedures as are established by law.�

It was shortly after that, CCHR was founded and on these very principles. It has, thus, been one of its most important missions to protect individuals from psychiatry�s �easy seizure� laws.

In 1969, Hungarian refugee Victor Gyory was involuntarily committed to a Pennsylvania institution, stripped naked, held in isolation against his will, and then forced to undergo electroshock. He was refused the right to an attorney. Alerted to the case, CCHR obtained the aid of Hungarian born Dr. Thomas Szasz, who discovered that Gyory had been diagnosed as �schizophrenic with paranoid tendencies� for one simple reason� his inability to speak English. As CCHR prepared legal action, the hospital director capitulated and released Gyory.

Without CCHR assistance, Gyory�s commitment would have become a life sentence.

Restraint Deaths in Psychiatric Facilities

In psychiatric institutions, countless patients of all ages die as a result of savage restraint procedures passed off as therapy.

CCHR works with prosecutors and legislators to expose this criminality and to ensure safeguards are implemented to protect patients from what has become a �normal� practice of assaulting patients.

Legal Rights Achieved

As a result of CCHR�s efforts, numerous legal safeguards and protections against arbitrary psychiatric incarceration and the use of violent restraint procedures have been secured.

1970s�1980s: Investigations leading to government inquiries into numerous state psychiatric facilities in California, Illinois, Hawaii, Michigan and Missouri�resulting in hospital administrators and psychiatrists being dismissed, criminal and grand jury investigations being held, closure of major psychiatric units and reforms to protect patients� rights.

In Australia in the 1980s, legislation mandated that people in any future commitment proceeding be provided legal representation at state cost with the right to appeal and to call witnesses in their support. Furthermore, people could no longer be committed for their religious, cultural or political beliefs and practices.

In 1980, a federal court in California ruled that involuntarily committed persons had the right to refuse treatment.

In 1993, Texas added criminal penalties for wrongful commitment with offending psychiatrists facing up to two years in jail.

In 1999, CCHR helped uncover and expose the grisly truth that up to 150 restraint deaths occur each year in the United States alone, nearly 10% of them children, some as young as six. Federal regulations were passed that year that prohibited the use of physical and chemical (powerful mind-altering drugs) restraints to coerce or discipline patients. The regulations also ordered a �national reporting system� to be implemented and for government funding to be cut to any facility that did not comply.

In Denmark, CCHR helped secure the release of individuals wrongly and forcibly incarcerated, including some who had been held in bed restraints.

After the discovery that private psychiatric hospitals in Japan were forcibly incarcerating and illegally restraining elderly patients, regulations were passed in 2000 prohibiting the use of physical restraints on the elderly.

In 2000, the U.S. state of North Carolina passed a law regulating the use of restraints and isolation and implemented a mandatory reporting system, which imposed fines for noncompliance with the regulations.

In 2003, CCHR worked with other organizations to prevent passage of an involuntary commitment law in Russia that would have allowed psychiatrists to arbitrarily commit citizens, including adolescents, to a psychiatric facility without a legal proceeding.
As a result of CCHR�s efforts, numerous legal safeguards and protections against arbitrary psychiatric incarceration and the use of violent restraint procedures have been secured in many countries.

EXPOSING HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATORS:
CCHR knows no boundaries in bringing criminal psychiatrists to justice, as it did when its investigators exposed forced incarceration, restraint and drugging of patients by Japanese psychiatrists. Several psychiatric facilities were closed down, their top psychiatrists found guilty of malpractice, fined and jailed . One hospital chain was fraudulently billing for 400 non-existent patients and was fined billions of yen.

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