CCHR Int

Official CCHR International— Non-profit Mental Health Industry Watchdog that has helped enact 190 laws protecting patients from abuse.

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

Yet another tragedy as a result of the psychiatric industry. At least 17 psychiatric drugs prescribed to the patient, that didn’t work—he reports that an antidepressant increased his anxiety and obsessive thoughts—he is given electroshock, TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation), and ketamine across multiple psychiatric facilities, then discharged while expressing suicidal thoughts. Result: death by suicide.
This is not an isolated failure. Abuses like this are rampant throughout the mental health industry, which has consistently demonstrated it cannot reform itself and must be held to account. https://t.co/h5e8ekfAE5

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

Agreed 🙌🙌 — and long overdue

[danielle gansky @DanielleGansky]

Surreal to see the NIH Director @NIHDirector_Jay talking about PSSD—an injury long dismissed, with victims told by doctors their antidepressant induced harm wasn’t real.

For years it was relegated to Reddit forums and hidden corners of the internet: an abandoned community of devastated lives desperately seeking answers, with no one listening.

These are real people unjustly left to suffer, stripped of fundamental parts of their humanity. We cannot leave them behind. We urgently need research into the underlying mechanisms and a path toward recovery. #pssd @PSSDNetwork @elliotbewick @lololizzle

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

@K3ll3y75 So sorry Kelly. This is why we need policy change

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

WHO Report Warns Psychiatric Hospitals Violate Patient Autonomy and Rights, With Nearly Half of Residents Held Involuntarily

The new WHO guidelines warn that institutional psychiatric treatment can separate people from their communities, limit their autonomy, and expose them to risks of human rights violations. Nearly half of people living in large psychiatric hospitals and social care institutions are held against their will for months, years, or even decades. More than 1.2 million Americans are involuntarily committed each year.

A Harvard School of Public Health study says psychiatric hospitals continue to use forced electroshock, chemical restraints, and prolonged mechanical restraint—practices that violate the United Nations Convention against Torture (UNCAT), which the U.S. has ratified.

Despite growing recognition of these harms, the United States is moving in the opposite direction. The American Bar Association has noted that a human rights-centered approach requires shifting away from primarily medicalized responses toward person-centered support, yet “legislative reforms have often become procedural formalities that legitimize restrictive interventions under the guise of legal protection.”

These findings underscore the scale of coercive practices still embedded in institutional mental health systems.

https://t.co/yARrnXvJ8b

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

UK Warns All Antidepressant Patients of Suicide Risk and Persistent Sexual Dysfunction—FDA Still Lags; The UK’s MHRA, the country’s drug regulatory agency,
is now requiring clearer alerts for all patients on the risk of post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD) and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Once again the MHRA has acted while the FDA lags.

Back in 2003, it was the MHRA that first warned that SSRIs increased suicide and self-harm risk in young people, despite the FDA having this data for decades.

The FDA only followed with its own warnings a year after the MHRA, and even today the black box warning on suicidal ideation extend only to age 24—implying the risk magically disappears on one’s 25th birthday.
The UK’s new alerts on suicidal thoughts and behaviors apply to patients of all ages. The FDA has yet to warn on post SSRI sexual dysfunction.

https://t.co/wIqCyQ1VtE

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

ADHD drugs are in the same class of highly addictive drugs (DEA schedule 2) as Fentanyl and Oxycontin - and they are handed out to children like candy

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

ADHD drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall, Vyvanse, Focalin, Dexedrine, and more carry the FDA’s most severe warning, the black box, for having a “high potential for abuse,” including “addiction.” According to the FDA May 2023 Drug Safety Communication, “𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗮 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹, 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗲, 𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗼 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗻𝗼𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝘂𝘀𝗲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗱𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗱𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵.”

The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) classifies drugs into Schedules I–V primarily according their potential for abuse and drug dependence. ADHD drugs are classified as Schedule 2 – prescription drugs which have the highest potential for abuse, and include OxyContin, Fentanyl, Ritalin, Adderall, Dexedrine, Concerta, Vyvanse, Focalin and more.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗘𝗔 𝗳𝘂𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗱𝗿𝘂𝗴𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗼 “𝘀𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝘀𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲” 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗿𝗲 “𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗱𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿𝗼𝘂𝘀.”

Given that data, consider that the CDC estimates 3.7 – 4 million children are currently prescribed ADHD drugs for an ADHD "diagnosis" which is not adjudicated by any medical test, brain scan or confirmatory medical test, but simply a checklist of behaviors. This is why the NIH admits that there is no valid test for ADHD.

[PSSD Network | Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction @PSSDNetwork]

@regardthefrost Will the @NIH be funding research into an iatrogenic disease caused by commonly prescribed antidepressants? In the past several decades, almost no public money has gone towards researching irreversible Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD).
https://t.co/1nMg6bZPES

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

"Even in my darkest moments, something deep inside me knew not to take the pill. I remember telling her, “I think Zoloft is what killed my husband. But more importantly, my husband just died. Aren’t I supposed to hurt?”

[Kim Witczak 💜 @woodymatters]

I still think back to when my doctor offered me antidepressants after my husband’s sudden death.

Even in my darkest moments, something deep inside me knew not to take the pill. I remember telling her, “I think Zoloft is what killed my husband. But more importantly, my husband just died. Aren’t I supposed to hurt?”

Now, as I near the end of writing my book and find myself revisiting some of those darkest moments, I’m profoundly grateful I trusted that instinct and allowed myself to feel the full weight of my grief rather than trying to numb it.

I cried because I loved. And eventually, I laughed again, even while I was grieving.

Our emotions are part of what makes us human. The pain, the joy, the sorrow, the love. I believe they are among God’s greatest gifts. And I wouldn’t want to lose or numb any of them.

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

"For more than three decades, America has normalized the widespread drugging of children and adults under the banner of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Yet, ADHD remains a subjective psychiatric label with no objective medical test..." https://t.co/8HdZQxhy0f

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

With zero accountability for the damage they inflict...

[Dr. Roger McFillin @DrMcFillin]

Psychiatry holds the legal power to detain you and drug you against your will. It holds that power on the basis of diagnoses with no objective test and no confirmed mechanism of disease. That authority did not come from medicine. Psychiatry has institutional authority, pharmaceutical funding, and legal protection. What it does not have is rigorous science.

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD)—patients are never warned this "side effect" can be permanent 👇

[PSSD Network | Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction @PSSDNetwork]

"I was just immediately very, very horrified that this was allowed to happen to me without my consent, because PSSD is not even in the drug labels. There's no warning beforehand."

Lauren Friedman (@lololizzle) explains that there still aren't any warnings about PSSD in the USA.

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

There is virtually zero informed consent with these SSRIs.

[PSSD Network | Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction @PSSDNetwork]

"It’s just like a full nervous-system injury, in which, basically, all the best parts of humanity are taken from you."

PSSD sufferer Lauren Friedman (@lololizzle) describes the devastating impact of the condition in a recent interview with Isabel Brown (@theisabelb).

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD) is something the FDA must address so patients are fully informed and warned as it's devastating lives

[Isabel Brown @theisabelb]

There is a silent epidemic of Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD) plaguing Generation Z today that virtually NO ONE is talking about -- causing a complete and permanent loss of sex drive, sensation, and emotional connection for the rest of your life. 💔

Lauren is just one of countless young women struggling with the condition, which doctors in America today are still incredibly reluctant to diagnose -- despite our culture's willingness to prescribe antidepressants to anyone with minimal symptoms.

Today, she's speaking out, warning other young women like her that your Zoloft prescription may not be harmless after all... despite PSSD being completely ABSENT from any warning labels on SSRI drugs themselves 👀

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

Thirty years after CCHR sued the FDA for the Prozac files, SSRI side effects are still not fully disclosed.

CCHR was the only organization to fully press for disclosure of the suppressed SSRI evidence both through FOIA and by suing the FDA. It would still take another 12 years before the internal safety data that CCHR had fought to expose finally came to light.

More than 35 years ago, the FDA already possessed substantial evidence that SSRIs could trigger severe adverse effects, including agitation, suicidal ideation, and violence. Internal company documents from the 1980s, clinical trial data, and a rapidly growing volume of adverse reaction reports already pointed to these risks long before the drugs became household names.

Through persistent Freedom of Information Act requests and litigation against the FDA itself, CCHR obtained and publicized critical safety data that regulators and manufacturers already held.

If a mental health industry watchdog could uncover and document these risks, the mental health industry handing out the drugs like candy had every opportunity to do the same—and act on it.

To this day, many psychiatrists and defenders of psychiatry’s ignorance of drug risks claim they “didn’t know” about these dangers. But the data has been there all along for anyone who cared to listen to the patients or press for the facts.

In the 1980s, when Prozac, the first SSRI, came on the market, CCHR began receiving hundreds of case reports of people experiencing severe side effects. These reports, which started accumulating in the late 1980s, described agitation, suicidal ideation, violence, and other serious adverse reactions. If CCHR was receiving this many reports, the psychiatric industry was certainly receiving them too—but took no action. CCHR, on the other hand, responded to these alarming consumer reports by filing a Citizen Petition seeking to remove the drug from the market and pressing the FDA for greater scrutiny of the emerging safety signals.

This pressure contributed to the FDA’s decision to convene its Psychopharmacological Drugs Advisory Committee (PDAC) for a public hearing on 20 September 1991. Dozens of patients and family members gave firsthand testimony describing how Prozac had triggered suicide attempts, completed suicides, and acts of violence. Despite this powerful evidence, the majority of the panel—many of whom had financial ties to pharmaceutical companies and were granted conflict-of-interest waivers—chose to ignore the witnesses. The committee voted that there was no credible evidence linking the drug to suicidality or violence and recommended no changes to the label. (It would take another 13 years for the FDA to finally add safety warnings on SSRIs for suicidal ideation — the black-box warnings — which the American Psychiatric Association protested against.)

Following the hearing, CCHR continued its efforts by submitting a broad FOIA request in June 1992 for all FDA records concerning Prozac, including the clinical trial data submitted by the manufacturer, the New Drug Application files, and the individual adverse-reaction reports. When the agency’s response proved incomplete, CCHR sued. In Citizens Commission on Human Rights v. FDA (45 F.3d 1325, 9th Cir. 1995), the Ninth Circuit largely upheld the FDA and Eli Lilly on the adequacy of the search and most withholdings, but remanded on the individual adverse-reaction reports, which the agency conceded were not exempt.

The largest volume of material kept from public view was protected under FOIA Exemption 4 as trade secrets or confidential commercial information—Lilly’s internal clinical-trial analyses, data tables, and strategic memos. Those documents later surfaced through product-liability discovery and a 2004 leak to the British Medical Journal. They included a November 1988 Lilly report showing that 38% of Prozac patients experienced new “activation” symptoms (agitation, anxiety, insomnia) versus 19% on placebo, internal compilations indicating higher reported rates of suicide attempts and hostility compared with older antidepressants, and company discussions from the 1980s acknowledging these risks and considering how to limit their impact on labeling and prescribing. Psychiatrists and clinical researchers employed by or contracted to the company were directly involved in generating, reviewing, and interpreting the safety data that the company treated as confidential and that only later emerged through litigation.

Had Exemption 4 not been invoked, that internal safety data would have been available to the general public years earlier. The same internal safety data was leaked anonymously to the British Medical Journal in December 2004.

The psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry failed to act then, just like they are failing to act today, dismissing PSSD, and other well documented SSRI side effects as anecdotal while patients continue to be injured by these drugs.

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

"When will we recognize and publicly identify the medical criminals among us? Or is it the very possibility of perceiving many of our leading psychiatrists and psychiatric institutions in this way precluded by the fact that they represent the officially ‘correct’ views and practices. Is it precluded because they have the ears of our lawyers and legislators, journalists and judges? Or is it precluded because they are control the vast funds, collected by the state through taxing the citizens, which finance an enterprise whose basic moral legitimacy we should call into question?” - Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry

[RosieM @RosieM1276203]

Another pharmaceutical disaster.

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

https://t.co/tYGuoDuAws

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

Parents Need Better Information about Psychiatric Drug and Hospital Risks and to be warned against companies that forcibly transport “troubled” teens to residential treatment facilities and wilderness camps. Distressed families pay $2,000–$4,000, and sometimes a consultant fee of up to $10,000 more, to have children taken from bed at night and driven across state lines, even when the child is of consenting age, and locked in abusive programs thousands of miles from home.
The practice is known as “gooning.”

About 40,000 children, including some from Canada, are held in U.S. behavioral facilities. The U.S. behavioral market was valued at $92.14 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $132.46 billion by 2032. One study put youth treatment spending at approximately $12 billion.

By 2015, 82% of residential facilities still used seclusion and restraints. At least 145 children died of preventable causes in residential centers over three decades; at least 62 died from asphyxiation or restraint injury. https://t.co/CCqI4Y7rN9

[CCHR Int @CCHRInt]

Psychiatric drugs and violence - Without systematic toxicology and psychotropic drug history data, policymakers cannot measure how often these drugs were present or spot patterns that warrant study. https://t.co/VSIqbzQoVw