CCHR Exposes Harms Behind Today's Mental Health Awareness Campaigns
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LOS ANGELES - Washingtoner -- By CCHR International

Each May and October, millions are urged to "raise awareness" for mental health through national and international campaigns, including World Mental Health Day in October. Yet, according to the mental health industry watchdog, Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR), many of the advocacy campaigns driving these observances are dominated by pharmaceutical interests and a biomedical model reliant on psychotropic drugs, electroshock, and even psychosurgery. The outcome has been catastrophic: more than 76 million Americans take psychiatric drugs, and an estimated 100,000—including children as young as five—are electroshocked annually.

CCHR warns that modern mental health awareness campaigns are not about understanding the mind but promoting psychiatry's drug-driven model of "treatment." Since its founding in 1969, the organization has used these awareness months to expose psychiatric abuse and coercion—particularly the drugging, electroshocking, and violent restraint of children in behavioral facilities. Working with parents, doctors, and lawmakers, CCHR has helped establish hundreds of laws globally to protect against psychiatric harm, including the first U.S. bans on electroshock for minors in California (1976) and Texas (1993), and the 1983 prohibition of Deep Sleep Treatment in Australia following 48 patient deaths—now a criminal offense to administer it in New South Wales and Western Australia.

Challenging Drug-Induced Violence

CCHR has documented the tragic outcomes of psychiatry's drug-based approach, including its potential links to acts of senseless violence. It testified before the first inquest into the deaths of eight victims of a Kentucky mass shooting in 1989, where the perpetrator's psychiatrist acknowledged that the antidepressant he was prescribed potentially contributed to the crime. A decade later, CCHR obtained confirmation that Columbine ringleader Eric Harris had the antidepressant Luvox in his system—despite clinical trials showing the drug could "form of psychosis characterized by exalted feelings, delusions of grandeur…and overproduction of ideas."[1]

The watchdog's efforts led to a 1999 Colorado government hearing on psychiatric drugs and violence, with the chair, State Rep. Penn Pfiffner, stating: "There is enough coincidence and enough professional opinion from legitimate scientists to cause us to raise the issue and to ask further questions."[2] Working with Patricia Johnson, then-member of the Colorado State Board of Education, CCHR helped obtain a precedent-setting resolution urging academic—not chemical—solutions for classroom issues.[3]

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CCHR also joined with medical experts and parents to press the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to issue its 2004 "black box" warning that antidepressants can cause suicidal behavior in children, which was later expanded in 2007 to include young adults up to age 24. Today, studies confirm that 46–71% of antidepressant users experience emotional blunting, dulling empathy, and increasing detachment—a factor present in numerous violent tragedies.[4]

Further reforms followed. In 2004, CCHR helped secure the federal Prohibition of Mandatory Medication amendment, banning schools from forcing children to take psychotropic drugs as a condition of education. Three years later, language CCHR helped introduce into the FDA reform bill required pharmaceutical ads to direct consumers to report drug side effects, causing adverse drug reporting to increase by 33 percent.[5]

CCHR's investigations have also helped expose corruption and abuse in the psychiatric hospital and "troubled teen treatment" industry. Working with whistleblowers and journalists, it uncovered coercive admissions and insurance fraud within major private psychiatric hospital chains, leading to multiple state and federal investigations, criminal penalties, and closure of hundreds of abusive facilities. New laws were enacted to prohibit "bounty hunter" practices used to capture insured individuals for involuntary commitment and billing exploitation.[6]

Raising awareness, CCHR emphasizes, means parents can make better-informed choices and seek non-invasive, evidence-based help for their children. One expert has described the psychiatric polypharmacy trend as creating "a generation of child guinea pigs." As The New York Times reported, "many psychiatric drugs commonly prescribed to adolescents are not approved for people under 18. And they are being prescribed in combinations that have not been studied for safety or for their long-term impact on the developing brain."[7]

In 2013, nearly 8.4 million American children were taking psychiatric drugs.[8] By 2020, the IQVIA Total Patient Tracker Database showed that number had dropped to 6.1 million[9]—a notable decline that CCHR attributes in part to heightened public awareness, stronger warnings, and parental advocacy. However, millions of children remain drugged, underscoring that while progress has been made, the systemic overreliance on psychotropic drugs continues.

In addition to its feature-length documentaries, CCHR produces short educational videos on its YouTube channel to inform the public about mental health abuses and their prevention. Working alongside doctors, whistleblowers, parents, consumers, and civil and human rights organizations, CCHR continues to supply legislators and government agencies with documentation exposing psychiatric abuses and driving legislative reform to safeguard consumer and patient rights.

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Today, both the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations agencies are calling for an end to coercive psychiatric practices—particularly those inflicted on children. Yet much of the mental-health establishment, including "patient-advocacy" groups with deep pharmaceutical ties, remains silent—endorsing mass drugging instead of confronting its documented dangers.

For more than five decades, CCHR International, which was originally established by the Church of Scientology and eminent professor of psychiatry, Dr. Thomas Szasz, has been a catalyst for reform, exposing human-rights violations in psychiatry and helping to achieve legislative and cultural change that has already begun to reduce child drugging and public acceptance of coercion. Its continuing campaigns seek a mental-health system based on transparency, informed consent, and respect for human dignity—affirming that lasting mental health will come not through drugs or shocks, but through compassion, truth, and accountability.

Sources:

[1] www.cchrint.org/2023/01/16/school-mental-health-programs-questioned-after-6-year-old-shot-teacher/

[2] www.cchrint.org/2023/01/16/school-mental-health-programs-questioned-after-6-year-old-shot-teacher/; Kelly P. O'Meara, "A Different Kind of Drug War," Insight Magazine, 13 Dec. 1999

[3] www.cchrint.org/2023/01/16/school-mental-health-programs-questioned-after-6-year-old-shot-teacher/; "Resolution: Promoting the Use of Academic Solutions to Resolve Problems with Behavior, Attention, and Learning," Colorado State Board of Education, 11 Nov. 1999

[4] www.cchrint.org/2022/09/05/the-travesty-of-6-million-youths-on-psychotropics-a-expert-calls-it-a-generation-of-child-guinea-pigs/; "Emotional Blunting: Causes, Symptoms & Treatment," Very Well Mind, 9 Nov 2021, www.verywellmind.com/can-antidepressants-make-you-feel-emotionally-numb-1067348

[5] www.cchrint.org/about-us/cchr-accomplishments/

[6] www.cchrint.org/about-us/cchr-accomplishments/

[7] www.cchrint.org/2022/09/05/the-travesty-of-6-million-youths-on-psychotropics-a-expert-calls-it-a-generation-of-child-guinea-pigs/; Karol Markowicz, "The NY Times suddenly discovered we're giving kids dangerous drugs," New York Post, 29 Aug. 2022, nypost.com/2022/08/29/the-ny-times-suddenly-discovered-were-giving-kids-dangerous-drugs/; "This Teen Was Prescribed 10 Psychiatric Drugs. She's Not Alone," The New York Times, 27 Aug. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/health/teens-psychiatric-drugs.html

[8] www.cchrint.org/2016/11/30/cchr-launches-parents-know-your-rights-campaign/

[9] www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/children-on-psychiatric-drugs/