Human Rights Group Accuses Japanese Psychiatrists of Elder Abuse

Citizens Commission on Human Rights protesters challenge psychiatrists to explain why 76 percent of elderly patients are prescribed powerful and highly controversial psychiatric drugs for depression.

Psychiatrists attending the 15th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Mood Disorders were confronted by members of Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an international mental health watchdog group established in 1969.

The protest march began at Tokyo’s Kashiwagi Park and continued to the Shinjuku NS Building. There, where sessions of the annual meeting were taking place, CCHR opened its traveling exhibit, Psychiatry: An Industry of Death.

The museum-style displays document a side of psychiatry’s past and present that is rarely seen. Historical and contemporary footage, including interviews with over 150 experts and survivors, cover the brutal psychiatric treatments of the past and trace its history through to the drugs used today.

Citizens Commission on Human Rights was established by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry and Lifetime Fellow of the APA. CCHR has obtained over 182 laws that protect individuals against psychiatric abuse.