CCHR Florida Joined in March Against Psychiatric Abuses in Italy & Europe

CLEARWATER, Fla., April 06, 2017 -- Using social media, members of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) Florida joined in the protest of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) Congress which was held in Florence on Saturday, April 1^st by CCHR Italy.  CCHR says  the Congress promotes dangerous psychotropic drugs and brain-damaging interventions that put Italians and other Europeans’ mental health and lives at risk.

CCHR followed up the protest march with its opening of a world-acclaimed exhibition on psychiatry at the Auditorium del Duomo. The exhibit has displays and a multi-award-winning documentary that detail the harmful history of psychiatry and its contemporary abuses.  This includes Italy being the birthplace of electroshock treatment that the protestors say should be banned. 

According to Diane Stein, President of CCHR Florida said, “The EPA has serious conflicts of interest with at least eight pharmaceutical companies sponsoring the convention, including Janssen, Lundbeck, Sunovion, Pfizer, Pierre Fabre Laboratories, Otsuka, Shire, and Takeda.  Many of these companies have paid out millions of Euros to settle lawsuits against them in the United States concerning the psychiatric drugs they manufacture.”

The CCHR exhibit in Italy also exposes the conflicts of interests in the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry. It comprises 75 panels and 13 video documentaries, covering 300 years of painful and harmful mental health treatments - from the early times in France until today, providing the visitors with factual evidence of psychiatric abuse that citizens need to be aware of.

This travelling exhibition has been seen by hundreds of thousands visitors in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Budapest, Paris, Tokyo, Sydney, and Rome, and will stay open to visitors until April 10. For further information: www.ccdu.org

About CCHR:
Initially established by the Church of Scientology and renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz in 1969, CCHR’s mission is to eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections. 

It was L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, who brought the terror of psychiatric imprisonment to the notice of the world.  In March 1969, he said, “Thousands and thousands are seized without process of law, every week, over the ‘free world’ tortured, castrated, killed.  All in the name of ‘mental health.’”

Diane Stein / 727-467-6964