CCHR Victoria – About Us

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is a non-profit, non-political, non-religious mental health organisation. Its mission is to eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections. CCHR has helped to enact more than 150 laws protecting individuals from abusive or coercive mental health practices. CCHR functions solely as a mental health organisation, working alongside many medical professionals including doctors, scientists, nurses and those few psychiatrists who have taken a stance against the biological/drug model of “disease” that is continually promoted by the psychiatric/ pharmaceutical industry as a way to sell drugs. CCHR’s Board of Advisers, called Commissioners, include doctors, scientists, psychologists, lawyers, legislators,educators, business professionals, artists and civil and human rights representatives. There are more than 250 CCHR chapters in 34 countries, with the international headquarters based in Los Angeles, California.

Our Stance on Psychiatric Drugs: People frequently ask if CCHR is of the opinion that no one should ever take psychiatric drugs, but this website is not dedicated to opinion. It is dedicated to providing information that a multi-billion dollar psycho/pharmaceutical industry does not want people to have.

For this reason CCHR created the psychiatric drug side effects search engine which consists solely of international drug regulatory warnings, published studies and adverse reactions to psychiatric drugs filed with the U.S. FDA. Regarding psychiatric diagnosis, it is not a matter of opinion about whether mental disorders are “real” but whether there are valid medical tests to prove mental disorders are medical conditions requiring the administration of mind-altering and potentially lethal psychiatric drugs—and the answer is no.

The pertinent question is this: Do people have a right to all the information about
A) the documented risks of psychiatric drugs
B) the medical validity of the psychiatric diagnosis for which drugs are being prescribed;
C) to be given non-harmful medical alternatives to psychiatric drugs/treatment; and
D) the right to refuse any treatment the patient considers harmful.

CCHR’s answer to all of these questions is yes.

The psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry spends billions of dollars a year in order to convince the public, legislators and the press that psychiatric disorders such as Bi-Polar Disorder, Depression, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, etc., are medical diseases on par with verifiable medical conditions such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. This is simply a way to maintain their hold on a $84 billion dollar-a-year psychiatric drug industry that is based on marketing and not science. Unlike real medical disease, there are no scientific tests to verify the medical existence of any psychiatric disorder.

Despite decades of trying to prove mental disorders are biological brain conditions, due to chemical imbalances or genetic factors, psychiatry has failed to prove even one of their hundreds of so-called mental disorders is due to a faulty or “chemically imbalanced” brain. To counter this obvious flaw in their push to medicalise behaviours, the psychiatric industry will claim that there are certain medical conditions that do not have a verifiable test so this justifies the fact that there aren’t medical tests for mental illness. This is frankly a lame argument; Whereas there may be rare medical conditions that do not have a verifiable medical test, there are virtually no psychiatric disorders that can be verified medically as a physical abnormality/disease. This is not to say people don’t get depressed, sad, troubled, anxious, nervous or even sometimes act psychotic. The question then is simple—is this due to some mental “disease” that can be verified as one would verify cancer or a real medical condition?
And the answer is no. To find out more about psychiatric diagnoses, click here

How CCHR Was Established:

Dr. Thomas Szasz

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.

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 CCHR’s founding, 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.

Today, CCHR is 250 chapters strong in 34 countries, and has established itself as a powerful human rights advocacy group. Each year we present our 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.

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 that 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.

CCHR has long fought to restore basic unalienable 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. CCHR does not advocate for any particular medical, educational or particular treatment, but does advocate for giving people alternatives and resources to assist them in finding non-harmful solutions, featured on CCHR’s website here.

As a non-profit organization, it is through public donations that we are able to continue our educational campaigns. We welcome you to join us. For more information on donating to CCHR click here.

Who Are We?