Australians Are in Danger, Warns Psychiatric Watchdog

Citizens Commission on Human Rights documentary alerts Australians to dangerous practices that threaten the lives and wellbeing of the people of the country.

A CCHR documentary, Psychiatry: Friend or Foe? The Untold Story of Australian Psychiatry, looks into these startling facts.

In Australia, with a population of 24 million:

• More than 35 million prescriptions for psychiatric drugs are written every year and $9 billion is spent annually on mental health.
• From 1993 to 2012, the cost to the Australian government of antidepressants increased 505 percent
• Cost of antipsychotics increased 5,035 percent
• Cost of stimulant drugs increased 12,016 percent
• Of great concern is the growing number of children and teenagers on antidepressants when no antidepressant is approved for use for depression in Australia for children under the age of 18.

The film shows some of the tragic results of this practice.

One mother’s life was changed forever when she took her son to a psychiatrist to help him over a rough spot he was having with his girlfriend. After five minutes the psychiatrist concluded, “Looks like he might be depressed, I would recommend Prozac.”

She describes the boy a month later: “I barely recognized my son, the child who had been a very high achiever and quite academically gifted, who was loving and compassionate and enormously popular, turned into a child who didn’t want to go to school anymore, who became aggressive and angry all the time. Again and again I went to mental health services and said ‘I’m really against this, I don’t want him having Prozac’ and the psychiatrist’s response was to tell me that I should stop reading research and be quiet, that he was the doctor and I was just a mother and I needed to trust his professional judgment.”

The result of her trusting his judgment proved fatal: Her son hung himself in the family garage.

The film looks into the “science” behind these practices. It shows that there are no blood tests or brain scans that can prove the existence of the thousands of disorders named in psychiatry’s DSMV, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—the manual they use to determine what drugs to prescribe.

But worse, the film exposes that depending on psychiatrists’ “judgment” is grossly inadequate: For a week, three mental health experts observed 10 volunteers, half of whom had been previously diagnosed with a mental disorder. At the end of the week, they were asked for their diagnoses. Less than half were correct.

The film also shows the infamous history of psychiatry in Australia with its 1960’s adoption of “Deep Sleep Therapy.” For up to 14 days at a time, psychiatrists administered massive and repeated electroshocks to patients they drugged into artificial comas. The practice led to the death of 24 patients. A government Royal Commission assigned to investigate the abuses described Deep Sleep’s inventor Harry Bailey as “two-faced, devious, dissembling and unprincipled.”

A Citizens Commission on Human Rights campaign has been making this film known and available to Australian families. The film is available online.

Citizens Commission on Human Rights is a nonprofit charitable mental health watchdog cofounded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and professor of psychiatry Dr. Thomas Szasz. It is dedicated to eradicating psychiatric abuse and ensuring patient protection.

With headquarters in Los Angeles, California, CCHR International guides a global human rights advocacy network of some 180 chapters across 34 nations. CCHR Commissioners include physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, lawyers, legislators, government officials, educators and civil rights representatives.