Citizens Commission on Human Rights delivers open letter to APA’s leadership, calling on psychiatrists’ organization to take a stand consistent with the call by World Health Organization and Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to end to all forced mental health treatment.
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Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a mental health industry watchdog, hand-delivered an open letter May 7 to the leadership of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) at the APA annual conference in New York City, calling on the organization to renounce involuntary mental health treatment.
The letter was delivered to Petros Levounis, President, and Saul M. Levin, Chief Executive Officer, of the APA.
The letter calls on the APA to commit to the joint guidance issued in 2023 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to end all coercive psychiatric practices in the field of mental health, saying involuntary practices “violate the right to be protected from torture or cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.” CCHR sent a copy of its letter to the heads of OHCHR and the U.S.-based office of WHO.
Coercive psychiatric practices include involuntary institutionalization, forced drugging, the use of restraints and seclusion, and nonconsensual electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, or electroshock).
WHO/OHCHR also advised, “International human rights standards clarify that ECT without consent violates the right to physical and mental integrity and may constitute torture and ill-treatment.”
However, the APA’s “Position Statement on Voluntary and Involuntary Hospitalization of Adults with Mental Illness” continues to support coercive practices.
The CCHR letter also referenced 2021 guidance from WHO that coercive mental health treatment should end even for those experiencing acute mental distress, pointing out that individuals in mental health crisis “are at a heightened risk of their human rights being violated, including through forced admissions and treatment….These practices have been shown to be harmful to people’s mental, emotional and physical health, sometimes leading to death.”
Yet, the APA has maintained its support of the profitable practices, which have left maimed and traumatized patients in their wake.
In 2020, the World Psychiatric Association issued a position statement expressing concern over “the protection of human rights, and the extent to which coercive interventions violate these.” It provided “support for implementing alternatives to coercion in mental health care,” and observed, “There is widespread agreement that coercive practices are over-used.”
In April 2024, the European Congress of Psychiatry held a special seminar aimed at reducing the use of coercive measures in psychiatry, reportedly emphasizing the importance of the shift away from coercion because of its risks. Julian Beezhold, MD, current chair of the European Psychiatric Association's Section on Emergency Psychiatry, is also on record saying that examining how to reduce coercive practices in psychiatry is a priority for his association.
The APA lags these international human rights and psychiatric organizations in its refusal to date to reverse its support for coercive mental health practices.
CCHR will continue to bring this matter to the attention of the APA until the APA issues a formal statement in support of the elimination of the human rights abuse of involuntary detentions and other coercive psychiatric practices.
About the company: The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health.
Contact Info:
Name: Anne Goedeke
Email: Send Email
Organization: Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office
Address: Washington, DC
Website: http://CCHRNational.org
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ufOUHeS-ZY
Release ID: 89129518
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