Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is a lobbying organization founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, its stated mission is to "eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections." It is regarded by most non-Scientologists as a Scientology front group whose purpose is to push the organization's anti-psychiatry agenda.
Campaigns The group has organized media campaigns against various psychiatrists, psychiatric organizations and pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of Prozac. The campaign against Eli Lilly in 1991 caused Prozac's market share of antidepressants to drop from 25% to 21%. The group campaigned against the use of Ritalin for the treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, a disorder which the organization dismisses as nonexistent. The campaign was part of the Ritalin class action lawsuits against Novartis (the manufacturer of Ritalin), CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder), and the American Psychiatric Association (APA); all five lawsuits were dismissed in 2002. In 2003, CCHR presented a report with the title "The Silent Death of America's Children" to the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, with case histories of several dozen under-aged psychiatric patients who had died as a result of psychotropic drug treatment and restraint measures in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2004, Massachusetts state senators Richard T. Moore and Charles E. Shannon Jr. sponsored a bill requiring doctors to provide parents with information about a psychotropic medication's side effects and obtain their signature before prescribing any psychotropic drugs. Though Moore claimed in an interview to be unaware of CCHR's involvement, Shannon had worked with CCHR on the legislation. Kevin Hall, New England Director for CCHR, claimed to have drafted the bill. The medical establishment widely disagreed with the bill, which it dubbed the "Scientology Bill". Others opposing the bill included the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Parent/Professional Advocacy League. On 5 October 2006, National Mental Health Screening Day, CCHR picketed outside of Riverside Community Care in Wakefield, Massachusetts, holding a protest rally against mental health screening. According to journalist Gary Band in the Wakefield Observer, "The protest fell somewhat flat because Riverside has not conducted these screenings since 2001." According to an article published in the journal Mental Health, Religion & Culture, "in rare instances, CCHR (and thereby Scientology) has uncovered real instances of questionable (if not dire) psychiatric care, which bolstered its credibility", specifically the exposing of abuses at Chelmsford in 1978; conversely, CCHR has been accused of using pseudoscience and false information to disingenuously validate their claims.
In its early years, CCHR claimed victory in a 1969 Pennsylvania case involving Victor Győry, a Hungarian refugee who had been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital in April 1969. The police officers committing Győry said he had tried to kill himself. Doctors at Haverford State Hospital failed to realize that Győry spoke very little English and was speaking in Hungarian. They judged him "incoherent" and diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. The hospital refused Győry's request for legal representation, and administered drugs and electroshock treatment to him against his will over a three-month period. An aide at the hospital eventually notified CCHR. CCHR's general counsel John Joseph Matonis secured Győry's release through a writ of habeas corpus. CCHR continued to lobby for legislative reform on mental health issues such as the keeping of detailed computer records on involuntarily committed patients and their families, and drug experimentation without patients' consent. CCHR would typically request a tour of a psychiatric hospital, issue a public report based on patient testimony and other sources, and then push for legal investigations and reform. The early focus was on involuntary commitment procedures.
Chelmsford Hospital and DST From 1988 to 1990 the Australian government held the Chelmsford Royal Commission inquiry into Deep Sleep Therapy (DST). For a decade prior, CCHR had been pushing for an investigation of the Chelmsford Private Hospital in New South Wales, and its head, Dr. Harry Bailey, who had been practising DST from 1963 to 1979. The inquiry discovered that deep sleep therapy had killed 24 patients, not counting patients who had killed themselves, and close to a thousand had had brain damage. Of the former patients, 152 received reparations from a fund totaling in excess of 5 million dollars. Chelmsford Hospital was forced to close in 1990, and two of its psychiatric staff were made to face charges in 1992. Dr. Bailey himself stepped down in 1979 due to CCHR's protest campaign, and committed suicide by drug overdose in 1985, the night before he was subpoenaed to appear in court. His suicide note read, in part: "Let it be known that the Scientologists and the forces of madness have won."
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