The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is a nonprofit mental health watchdog, which has been responsible for helping to enact more than 150 laws protecting individuals from abusive or coercive practices. The CCHR has fought hard "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 diagnosis, the risks of psychiatric treatments, the right to all available medical alternatives and the right to refuse any treatment considered harmful."
The CCHR was co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus Dr. Thomas Szasz in efforts to fight the stripping of all constitutional, civil and human rights of patients who were warehoused in institutions. The CCHR works alongside many medical professionals which includes doctors, scientists, nurses and those few psychiatrists who have taken a stand against the biological/drug model of “disease” that is constantly promoted by the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry as a way to sell drugs.
The CCHR has referred to psychiatry as a "junk science" in its compelling publication, "Psychiatry, An Industry of Death". The CCHR states that the primary reason for the creation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has been to provide psychiatry with a system of compensation for insurance billing which is similar to that which is used by mainstream medicine. The entries in the DSM are simply "disorders" passed by a committee of psychiatrists and not real diseases. The categorization of clusters of symptoms in the DSM has no known causes and none of the resultant diagnoses have been supported by objective scientific evidence.
And yet in spite of the complete lack of scientific credentials behind the DSM the CCHR notes that psychiatry in the U.S. alone brings in over $100 billion a year in funding for "treatment" of DSM-disorders. Renee Garfinkle, a psychologist, is quoted by the CCHR as saying the disorders to be included in psychiatry's DSM are chosen by a majority vote of American Psychiatric Association members based on the same scientific level as "you would choose a resturant."
The CCHR points out that nevertheless the tragically flawed DSM is used not only to diagnose mental illness and prescribe treatment, but also to resolve child custody battles, discrimination cases based on alleged psychiatric disability, to support court testimony, to modify education, and more. Still, there is absolutely no science to this diagnostic system as insurance companies estimate that the cost of treatment for "disorders" which cannot be physically proven is two times greater than for general medical conditions
The Harold Mandel, MD Natural Mental Health Care Reform Association
