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Mental Health Industry Facts

  • Surveys of nurses have determined dissatisfaction because of the poor quality of care in facilities where they work having deteriorated in recent years. Too often patient care has been compromised for the sake of profit—drugging the patient is less costly than paying for adequate nursing.

  • Indeed, it is estimated that with sufficient number of nurses, more than 6,700 patient deaths in hospitals could be avoided each year.

  • Many nursing and medical school students have visited CCHR’s “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” Museum viewing its 14 documentaries now available in a DVD of the same name. A common denominator among students seeing these is their concern over the increasing reliance upon psychotropic drugs in hospital settings and the damaging effects they have observed in patients prescribed them.

  • During the last decade, over 25,000 lawsuits have been pending in the United States against pharmaceutical companies and psychiatrists arising out of deaths and injuries caused by several classes of psychiatric drugs. The Courts of every state have been inundated with litigation involving the harms caused by psychiatric drugs.

  • In a national survey of psychiatrists, the results of which were published in Psychiatric Times, Dr. Sander Breiner, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University determined that 40% of psychiatrists are sued for malpractice during the course of their career.

  • A survey of 531 psychiatrists determined that 25% had chosen the field of psychiatry because of their own psychiatric problems or treatment.  Psychiatrists have higher rates of alcohol abuse and abuse of both prescription and other drugs.

  • The British Medical Journal has pointed to the disproportionate number of suicides among psychiatrists. In another study, 56% of those in the suicide group had prescribed a psychoactive drug for themselves and 42% had been seeing a mental health professional at the time of their self-inflicted death.

  • A study of Medicaid and Medicare insurance fraud in the U.S. over a 20 year period, showed psychiatry to have the worst track record of all medical disciplines.

  • The largest health care fraud suit in U.S. history was in mental health, with over $1.1 billion paid out in civil penalties and criminal fines to government, insurance agencies and patients.

  • Between 10% and 25% of psychiatrists admit to sexually abusing their patients. A U.S. national study of therapist-client sex involving minors revealed that 1 out of 20 victims of therapist sexual assault were minors.

  • We realize that the majority of physicians and nurses work hard to ensure their patients receive the best quality care. Today, however, they are compromised because of the destructive influence of unsupportable psychiatric diagnoses and drugs in general medicine. As many nursing and medical students report, while they can rely upon scientific instruments and tests to confirm physical illnesses, the same cannot be said of psychiatric disorders.

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