Psychiatrists in New York City attending the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association were met by hundreds of parents, children and human rights activists wearing black T-Shirts stating, "Psychiatry is Killing Your Children." Marching down 11th Avenue towards the psychiatric convention at the Jacob Javits Center, the protest, organized by the psychiatric watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), blamed psychiatrists for creating a bogus epidemic in childhood "mental disorders" requiring psychiatry's mind-altering, lethal drugs.
Leading the march was Bruce Wiseman, U.S. president of CCHR, "If you tally up the percentages of children psychiatrists say experience mental disorders in its billing bible, the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM), it would comprise more than the entire child and adolescent population of America," said Wiseman. "Parents are told that their child has a 'chemical imbalance' requiring drugs, giving the impression there is medical evidence to substantiate this, when no such evidence exists. The drugs prescribed are routinely promoted as 'safe' when in fact they have caused damage, death and suicide. When this happens, psychiatrists falsely pass off such tragedies as an unfortunate consequence of the child's 'mental disorder.' This is a fraud and this is abuse."
Between 1995 and 1999, the use of antidepressants for 7 to 12 year olds increased 151% and 580% for children under six, with some as young as 5 committing suicide. Two million children are prescribed SSRIs; another 6 million take cocaine-like stimulants. Sales of these drugs are more than $13 billion a year, a key factor in psychiatry suppressing information about the dangerous side effects of their drugs, the group says.
CCHR says that while parents have been forced through schools to put their child on deadly psychiatric drugs, the American Psychiatric Association has opposed a federal law, the Child Medication Safety Act that would prevent this assault. Children falsely labeled as "disordered" and forced onto the drugs through schools have died.
New York mother, Mrs. Patricia Weathers, President of the national group "Parents for a Label and Drug Free Education," marched alongside other New York parents who have been forced or pressured to administer the psychiatric drugs to their children, "I am fed up with psychiatrists telling parents that these so-called mental disorders are medically or scientifically proven to exist, when in fact the American Psychiatric Association simply votes on these disorders without a shred of proof to support them." At age 8, her own son, Michael, was forced through his school to take a stimulant and a psychiatrist later prescribed an antidepressant that turned him into a "Jekyll and Hyde." When, under medical advice, Mrs. Weathers took him off the drugs, she was reported to Child Protective Services and in 2000 charged with medical neglect.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only recently issued a warning about the antidepressant Patty Weathers' son was forced to take, saying that it can potentially induce a child to commit suicide. The FDA is currently under federal investigation for suppressing evidence by one of its own medical experts, Dr. Andrew Mosholder, who found a "statistically significant" risk of serious suicidal events among children taking the drugs.
Dr. Thomas Szasz, New York professor of psychiatry and co-founder of CCHR, says, "There is no blood or other biological test to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness, as there is for most bodily diseases."
At the Jacob Javits Center, psychiatrists were invited to view the documentary exhibit, "PSYCHIATRY EXPOSED" a 120-foot long pictorial display, which documents a 300-year history of psychiatric abuse and failure, from electroshock and psychosurgery to the mass drugging of children.
Published: May 03, 2004
Author: Marla Filidei
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is an international psychiatric watchdog group co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights. Contact CCHR's Media Department at 800-869-2247 or humanrights@cchr.org.
