Frequently Asked Questions Cont.

What are CCHR’s views about psychiatric drugs?

Psychiatric drugs are usually prescribed as a “solution” to a problem. But they only mask the problem and never allow the person to look at its real cause.

CCHR strongly disagrees with the enforced and harmful methods employed by psychiatrists. Psychiatrists fail to mention the horrendous side effects of their drugs. They often cause irreversible damage to the brain and nervous system. These effects usually require a further drug to contain them.

Bizarre side effects haunt those who take them: addiction, exhaustion, diminished sexual drive, trembling, nightmares, increased anxiety, and violent or suicidal behavior.

While these mind-altering drugs may deaden the mental and emotional pain connected with living, in so doing they can kill the drive that promotes the search for real solutions and improvement.

Aren’t drug companies to blame?

Psychiatry’s ability to convince drug companies and governments to pour billions of dollars into its practices is based upon fraudulent “diagnostic” criteria. Psychiatrists package various behavior and emotional characteristics and falsely categorize these as a “disease” or “disorder.” There isn’t a single aspect of behavior that doesn’t fall within the broad “symptoms” which comprise so-called “mental illness.”

Psychiatry has literally covered every base with invented criteria. The migraine sufferer has a “pain disorder,” the child who fidgets or is overzealous at play is “hyperactive,” the person who gives up smoking or drinking coffee has a “nicotine disorder” or suffers “caffeine intoxication.” If you stutter, it’s a mental illness. If you have a low math score, it’s “developmental arithmetic disorder.” If a teenager argues with his parents it’s “oppositional defiance disorder.”

These labels drum up business for psychiatrists. Drugs are produced to meet the psychiatrists’ demand. Without fraudulent diagnoses, we would not be witnessing the prescribed drug problem we experience today.

Why is CCHR opposed to involuntary commitment?

Commitment laws have been exploited for every wrong reason: financial, sexual, political, business profit, inheritance and even governmental secrecy. They are a deprivation of human and constitutional rights. Once committed—and declared incompetent—the person can lose the right to vote, drive a car, join the military, have control over their financial and business affairs and even practice their profession. The victim is also subjected to physically harmful treatments from which they may never recover.

There would be public outcry if someone ran amok in the street, grabbing citizens because he disapproved of their behavior, locking them up and submitting them to mind-altering drugs or electric shock. The perpetrator would be criminally charged and jailed for many years. But because the perpetrator is a psychiatrist, his brutal acts are cloaked in terms such as “treatment,” “mental health care,” or “preventing the person from doing harm,” and are sanctioned by law. Consequently, the systematic social and mental crippling of millions of people each year is ignored.

Imagine the alternative: mental hospitals as places of rest. People would not be assaulted with drugs and shock. They could rest and receive proper medical help. People would be more approachable about being helped. But under the current system, forcing anyone into a mental hospital is imprisonment masquerading as protection. All coercive mental health practices should be illegal. Like slavery before it, involuntary hospitalization should be abolished.

What do you do if a “mentally ill” person is violent?

The person who is violent or threatens violence must never be “treated” by psychiatrists. If a person commits a dangerous offense, criminal statutes exist to address this. Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, says: “All criminal behavior should be controlled by means of criminal law, from the administration of which psychiatrists ought to be excluded.”

Studies demonstrate that psychiatric predictions of dangerousness are no better than flipping a coin. Psychiatrists cannot “cure” what is essentially criminal or anti-social conduct.

The foundation of justice is based on the idea that each man is accountable for his actions. But each year thousands of criminals are excused of the most heinous crimes based on psychiatric testimony in courts. This undermines a key tool that society uses to protect itself from violent crime.

If someone is violent or breaks the law, he or she should be dealt with the way all people are who do such things. We don’t need psychiatrists for that.

What is the alternative?

Trusted with the care of the mentally disturbed, psychiatry has failed utterly. Humane, non-intrusive methods exist to help people who are troubled, overwhelmed by problems or emotionally distraught. For example, extensive medical studies prove that physical illnesses can manifest as “psychiatric” symptoms and should be addressed with medical treatment. Additionally, good nutrition, a healthy environment, and work that boosts morale will do much for these individuals. They respond to rest, safety and a healthy diet. What they don’t need is torture or to have their human rights violated as covered in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and CCHR’s Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights.

Dr. Thomas Szasz states, “Old age homes, workshops, temporary homes for indigent persons whose family ties have been disintegrated, progressive prison communities—these and many other facilities will be needed to assure the tasks now entrusted to mental hospitals.”

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