Citizens Commission on Human Rights Exposes the Harsh Truth About Psychiatry

Visitors to the Psychiatry: An Industry of Death exhibit in Athens learned about the dark past and continued violations of human rights perpetrated by psychiatrists.

Citizens Commission on Human Rights Greece brought the Psychiatry: An Industry of Death exhibit to Athens in the wake of the passage of a new mental health bill and the urgent need to educate the people of Greece about the dangers of so-called psychiatric treatments, harmful medications and the threat to human rights faced by those trapped in the system.

The exhibit opened at the stately Zappeion Megaron in the heart of Athens, where a constant stream of visitors were shocked to learn about the dark history and crimes of psychiatry and the urgency of bringing psychiatrists and their practices under the law.

The exhibit at the Zappeion Megaron in the heart of Athens.

CCHR Greece President introduced those attending the exhibit’s grand opening to psychiatry’s sordid past and how psychiatrists have even manipulated the European Convention on Human Rights to deny personal freedoms to those suffering from so-called mental disorders “for their own good.” CCHR has been at the forefront of the fight against psychiatric coercion, which has been gaining ground in recent years, including the United Nations and World Health Organization’s issuing guidelines last year for ending coercion in the field of mental health.

Although unable to attend, a doctor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki sent a speech to be read on his behalf in which he stated, “Psychiatry as an institution does not come under the provisions or regulation of any law. It is the law itself. Psychiatry as a practice, with its so-called ‘treatment’ through involuntary confinement, physical torture, psychopharmacological poisoning, electroshock and psychosurgery, is a radical and total denial of any law. It institutionalizes the breaking of every rule.... The only possible conclusion from any critical consideration of psychiatry is that there is not and cannot be some vague and nebulous ‘misuse’ or ‘abuse’ of psychiatry that must be curbed. Because psychiatry is an abuse in itself.”

The exhibit featured content from the Psychiatry: An Industry of Death documentary.

Visitors were shocked and outraged. One stated, “The volume of fraud and abuses from the psychopharmaceutical industry and the psychiatrists is enormous.”

“This is an important accusation based on chronological facts that were unknown to most of us,” said another. “A very dramatic image of what psychiatry has done to erase people.”

Yet another guest, who had been administered drugs against her will, stated, “I was raised believing I had no other choice, but you provided the answers, and I’m ready to start over.”

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is a mental health watchdog founded in 1969 by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz and the Church of Scientology, inspired by author, humanitarian and Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard and his commitment to abolishing any and all physically damaging practices in the field of mental health.