The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is a nonprofit mental health watchdog, responsible for helping to enact more than 150 laws protecting individuals from abusive or coercive practices. CCHR has long fought to restore basic inalienable human rights to the field of mental health, including, but not limited to, full informed consent regarding the medical legitimacy of psychiatric diagnosi
s, the risks of psychiatric treatments, the right to all available medical alternatives and the right to refuse any treatment considered harmful. CCHR was co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus Dr. Thomas Szasz at a time when patients were being warehoused in institutions and stripped of all constitutional, civil and human rights. CCHR functions solely as a mental health watchdog, working alongside many medical professionals including doctors, scientists, nurses and those few psychiatrists who have taken a stance against the biological/drug model of “disease” that is continually promoted by the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry as a way to sell drugs. It is a nonpolitical, nonreligious, nonprofit organization dedicated solely to eradicating mental health abuse and enacting patient and consumer protections. CCHR’s Board of Advisers, called Commissioners, include doctors, scientists, psychologists, lawyers, legislators, educators, business professionals, artists and civil and human rights representatives. People frequently ask if CCHR is of the opinion that no one should ever take psychiatric drugs, but this website is not dedicated to opinion. It is dedicated to providing information that a multibillion dollar psycho/pharmaceutical industry does not want people to see or to know. The real question therefore is this: Do people have a right to have all the information about (A) the known risks of the drugs and/or treatment from unbiased, nonconflicted medical review, (B) the medical validity of the diagnosis for which drugs are being prescribed, (C) all nondrug options (essentially informed consent) and (D) the right to refuse any treatment they consider harmful. CCHR has worked for more than forty years for full informed consent in the field of mental health, and the right to all the information regarding psychiatric diagnoses and treatment, not just the information coming from those with a vested interest in keeping the public in the dark. It is in this spirit that we present you with videos, blogs, news, medical experts and information designed to arm you with facts. As a nonprofit organization, it is through public donations that we are able to continue our educational campaigns.
