What is CCHR?

Citzens Commission on Human Rights

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is a non-profit, public benefit organization dedicated to investigating and exposing psychiatric violations of human rights. It also ensures that criminal acts within the psychiatric industry are reported to the proper authorities and acted upon.

CCHR was founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and the internationally acclaimed author, Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York, Syracuse. At that time, the victims of psychiatry were a forgotten minority group, warehoused under terrifying conditions in institutions around the world. Because of this, CCHR penned a Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights that has served as its guide for mental health reform.

Acknowledged by the Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Human Rights Commission as responsible for “many great reforms” that protect people from psychiatric abuse, CCHR has documented thousands of individual cases that demonstrate psychiatric drugs and often-brutal psychiatric practices create insanity and cause violence. A major cause of the drug problem worldwide is the psychiatrist, who for decades has used his influence as a medical doctor to push extremely dangerous and addictive mind-altering drugs on persons of all ages—some as young as one year old.

Since 1969, CCHR’s work has helped to save the lives of millions and prevented needless suffering for millions more. Many countries have now mandated informed consent for psychiatric treatment and the right to legal representation, advocacy, recourse and compensation for patients. In some countries, the use of psychosurgery and electroshock on children is banned.

While CCHR does not provide medical or legal advice, it works closely with attorneys and medical doctors and supports medical, but not psychiatric, practices.

One of CCHR’s primary concerns with psychiatry is its unscientific diagnostic system. Unlike medical diagnosis, psychiatrists categorize symptoms only, not disease. Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D., says, “The notion of scientific validity, though not an act, is related to fraud. Validity refers to the extent to which something represents or measures what it purports to represent or measure. When diagnostic measures do not represent what they purport to represent, we say that the measures lack validity...The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) published by the American Psychiatric Association…is notorious for low scientific validity.”

Understanding this fraudulent diagnostic premise, we can see why psychiatry and psychology, entrusted with billions of dollars to eradicate the problems of the mind, have created and perpetuated them. Their drug panaceas cause senseless acts of violence, suicide, sexual dysfunction, irreversible nervous system damage, hallucinations, apathy, irritability, anxiousness, psychosis and death. And with virtually unrestrained psychiatric drugging of so many of our schoolchildren, it is no surprise that the largest age group of murderers today are our 15-to-19-year-olds.

CCHR’s members include prominent doctors, lawyers, artists, educators, civil and human rights representatives and professionals who see it as their duty to “expose and help abolish any and all physically damaging practices in the field of mental healing.” They work to accomplish these clearly stated aims with many like-minded individuals and groups, including politicians, teachers, health professionals, government and law enforcement officers and media.

Today, 133 chapters strong in 34 countries, CCHR has established itself as a powerful human rights advocacy group and each year presents its Human Rights Awards to individuals who display exemplary courage in the worldwide fight for the restoration of basic human rights in the mental health area.