Psychiatric Drug Damage Ignored for Decades; CCHR Demands Federal Action
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LOS ANGELES - Washingtoner -- By CCHR International

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR) is raising alarms over the widespread, little-known fact that many psychiatric drugs are addictive, disfiguring, and capable of producing catastrophic neurological damage.  This is harm that the group says now warrants a federal investigation into how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has allowed such risks to proliferate for decades.

Foremost among these dangers is akathisia, a tormenting drug-induced condition that can drive even the most stable individual into extreme agitation, self-destructive impulses, and unpredictable violence. CCHR's new documentary, Prescription for Violence, exposes how frequently this reaction has been downplayed or ignored despite decades of consumer reports and medical warnings.

Psychiatrist Samuel Lee describes akathisia as "restlessness, not being comfortable in your body."

Victims in the CCHR film put it more bluntly: "Akathisia is internal torment, it's physical and emotional torment, you can't get away from it…It's like hell." And "Akathisia, it won't kill you, it will make you want to kill yourself. It's the feeling of ants, or fire, or electricity coursing head to toe…Death is the welcome thought," as it would be "the only relief."

CCHR International President Jan Eastgate says the system enabling this is indefensible: "Psychiatric drug damage is excused because the person is labeled 'mentally disordered.' It's blaming the victim for the poison they were given."

She continued: "The FDA has allowed drug makers and psychiatrists to argue—with no scientific support—that people 'need' drugs that can drive them to suicide, violence, and irreversible neurological injury. It is one of the great medical hoaxes of our time."

Pharmaceutical companies spent more than $350 million lobbying Congress and federal regulators—including the FDA—in 2022 alone, according to OpenSecrets. Former New England Journal of Medicine editor Dr. Marcia Angell warned, "When the FDA is dependent on industry fees, it creates a dangerous incentive to prioritize profit over public safety."

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With no meaningful effort to curb harmful psychiatric prescribing, drug companies increasingly view populations dependent on or harmed by psychiatric drugs as an expanding revenue base.

Long-term antidepressant use can cause physical dependence and severe withdrawal, all facts that manufacturers moved to obscure. At a 1996 closed-door, drug-industry-funded conference, SSRI antidepressant withdrawal was deliberately renamed "antidepressant discontinuation syndrome" to avoid linking these reactions to addiction.[1]

In CCHR's documentary, psychologist Gretchen Watson explains: "These drugs are powerful and our brains and entire bodies adapt to them. And often people experience very serious psychiatric symptoms when they're withdrawing." These include dizziness, insomnia, impaired concentration, fatigue, headache, tremor, nightmares, depressed mood, irritability, anxiety, and panic attacks.

Psychiatrist Samuel Lee concludes: "Just the fact that the body's withdrawing from the SSRIs, if too abruptly taken away, proves that actually there is a physiologic and mental addiction to the SSRIs." Mental health defense attorney Kendra Parris adds that calling it "discontinuation syndrome" is "sophistry—it's word-play." It is withdrawal by another name.

Often, the fact that patients worsen from taking these drugs is blamed on the patient being "treatment-resistant." Psychiatrist Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring explains that so-called "treatment resistance" often reflects iatrogenic injury: harm directly caused by psychiatric drugs. Antidepressants and other psychotropics can generate the very symptoms later mislabeled as "persistent illness." These are drug-induced conditions, not underlying disorders, he says. "Psychiatric drugs can cause brain damage. Those harmed by withdrawal syndromes—also called protracted withdrawal—sustain neurological injury that does not resolve even when the drug is reinstated. This is a defining feature of brain damage: reinstating the substance does not reverse the harm."[2]

Tardive dyskinesia (TD), disfiguring involuntary movements of the face, limbs, and torso, occurs in 20%–50% of antipsychotic users and can also be triggered by antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and stimulants.[3] It is mislabeled as a "neurological disorder" found in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), transforming it into a billable diagnosis.[4]

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The TD drug "treatments" cause many of the same symptoms as antipsychotics, including restlessness, drooling, irregular heartbeat, trembling and shaking of the fingers or hands. Some were approved with the admission that "the mechanism of action is unclear."[5]

In 2020, nearly 77 million Americans were on psychiatric drugs; over 11.1 million were on antipsychotics, including 829,372 children aged 0–17. That means 2.2–5.6 million Americans may already be permanently affected by TD from antipsychotics alone.[6]

Instead of halting the cause, the psychiatric-pharmaceutical system has created a second revenue stream: drugs to treat the drug-induced disorder—approved by the FDA. The global market for TD-treatment drugs exceeded $14 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $23 billion by 2033.[7]

Eastgate states: "This is a closed loop of harm and profit. First, the drugs cause neurological damage; then new drugs are sold to 'treat' the damage—and both are marketed as medical progress." She adds: "There is zero accountability for this abuse, especially for those forced to take psychotropic drugs under involuntary commitment and community treatment laws. They cannot refuse the drugs, and they cannot prevent the known damage the drugs will cause."

CCHR, which was established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and professor of psychiatry, Dr. Thomas Szasz, says DSM, the FDA's permissive drug approvals, and the aggressive marketing alliances between psychiatry and pharmaceutical companies have created a system where drug-induced harm is renamed as "illness," monetized, and buried under diagnostic expansion. It requires a full investigation and urges watching Prescription for Violence: Psychiatry's Deadly Side Effects for additional information.

Sources:

[1] Joseph Glenmullen, M.D., Prozac Backlash, (Simon & Schuster, NY, 2000), p. 76.

[2] Dr Josef Witt-Doerring, "The Ethics of Long-Term Psychiatric Drug Use and Why We Need a Better Way," MAD, 27 Feb 2025, www.madinamerica.com/2025/02/ethics-psychiatric-drug-use/

[3] Elyse M. Cornett, PhD, "Medication-Induced Tardive Dyskinesia: A Review and Update," The Ochsner Journal, Summer 2017, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5472076/

[4] Elyse M. Cornett, PhD, "Medication-Induced Tardive Dyskinesia: A Review and Update," The Ochsner Journal, Summer 2017, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5472076/

[5] www.managedcaremag.com/archives/2018/1/two-new-drugs-tardive-dyskinesia-hit-market

[6] www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/people-taking-psychiatric-drugs/

[7] www.linkedin.com/pulse/tardive-dyskinesia-td-treatment-drugs-4oogc