The mental health human rights watchdog’s websites, publications and documentaries were determined by Spain’s highest court to be of “importance in today’s society,” especially in the debate about ECT, psychosurgery, drugs, involuntary hospitalization, and children’s rights.

By CCHR International
The Mental Health Industry Watchdog
July 19, 2024

On July 12, 2024, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International won against an attempt at suppressing its freedom of speech about psychiatric abuse and patients’ rights in Spain. After a prolonged judicial battle, CCHR International and CCHR Spain secured a judgment from the Supreme Court of Spain, resulting in a resounding defeat for the Spanish Society of Psychiatry (SEP) who had claimed in 2020 that CCHR’s publications, documentaries and websites in the U.S. and in Spain harmed their “honor.”[1] The court rejected this and affirmed that CCHR’s materials “deal with a matter of undoubted general interest,” are “directly connected to the public debate in a democratic society,” and contribute to the “social debate on psychiatry.”[2]

As a watchdog, CCHR’s educational campaigns feature websites, publications and documentaries that include documented evidence, statements from patients, experts and legislators, studies, media reports, and ongoing commentaries on psychiatric human rights violations. The Supreme Court concurred: “The debate on certain psychiatric practices and, in particular, on involuntary institutionalization, use of psychotropic drugs, especially when the patients are children or adolescents, or surgical or electroconvulsive treatments, is of particular importance in today’s society.”

The court cited United Nations reports as “a good illustration of the important existing social, political and scientific debate on the issues,” and stated that suppressing such discussion “would imply an excessive restriction of freedom of expression that would not be justified by an imperative social need.”

In covering the decision, The European Times reported the websites of CCHR Spain and CCHR International in the United States contain “strong language against psychiatrists, accusing some of criminal behavior, abuse, and unethical practices,” and “in this battle between the right to honor and the right to freedom of expression, psychiatrists have lost.”[3]

CCHR, which was established as an independent body in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and professor of psychiatry, the late Dr. Thomas Szasz, has an impressive history of securing patient rights protections. Dr Szasz stated, “The task we set ourselves, to combat psychiatric coercion, is important.  It is a noble task in the pursuit of which we must, regardless of obstacles, persevere.”[4]

According to the original complaint from the SEP, it believed CCHR’s websites show “psychiatrists are criminals, precursors of genocides, responsible for the erosion of education and justice, inciters of drug addiction, drug traffickers” and that “there was sexual abuse by some psychiatrists of their patients….”[5]

Yet, as Jan Eastgate, President of CCHR Int, said, some 15,000 pages of documents were presented to the court that supported this: “This is exactly what CCHR has documented  to be true and because psychiatrists have failed to self-police and admit to their abuses, it has been left to CCHR to take action to protect their patients from further harm.”

Australian psychiatrist, Niall McLaren, said that CCHR’s work is “essential if we are to counter the endless propaganda of dehumanizing psychiatry” and “the idea that unhappy or distressed young people must be stripped of their human rights and drugged into conformity.”

Professor Lothar Krappmann, a former member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), stresses CCHR’s strong research ethic: “If you point out that I have achieved something for the misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated children, then I must add that this was possible, because of the good information and documents I have received from CCHR.”

The UNCRC had responded to CCHR’s evidence with hearings held into the increasing rate of children labeled with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and drugged with psychostimulants. It recommended government “monitoring of the excessive use of psychostimulants to children” and an emphasis on alternatives to drugs.

In the early 1970s, during apartheid South Africa, CCHR uncovered that psychiatrists had brutally imprisoned 10,000 Black individuals and exploited them as slave labor. CCHR reported this to the World Health Organization, which investigated the camps and in 1983 reported that “in no other medical field…is the contempt of the person cultivated by racism, more precisely portrayed than in psychiatry.” In 2001, a federal government minister praised CCHR for its “courage, compassion and exemplary fight against apartheid psychiatry,” which had “blatantly discriminated against Black people.”

In Australia, CCHR successfully campaigned to ban the deadly deep sleep therapy, a drug and electroshock practice that killed 48 patients. A New South Wales government Royal Commission validated CCHR’s tenacious efforts, with a leading lawyer calling its work the “most sustained and thorough exercise in whistleblowing, investigatory reporting and public interest work in the history of this country – bar none!”

In 2019, CCHR New Zealand obtained support from the UN Committee Against Torture to condemn the use of electroshock torture on children that had occurred at the now-closed Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital in the 1970s. In 2020, the UN forced the government to hold a Commission of Inquiry, where the NZ Solicitor-General conceded that the electroshock “treatment” met the legal definition of torture.[6] Judge Coral Shaw, Chairperson of the Royal Commission, thanked CCHR for its “extraordinary efforts that it has gone to since the 70s to keep this flame alive on behalf of the survivors. It’s been an extraordinary effort.”[7]

In February 2024, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists publicly apologized to the Lake Alice survivors for the “torturous actions carried out” on them, directed by psychiatrist Selwyn Leeks,” a member of the College who was responsible for electroshocking children without anesthetic, including to their legs and genitals.[8]

CCHR has also obtained a ban on the use of electroshock treatment on minors in Western Australia and four U.S. states.

In 2004, CCHR helped obtain a U.S. Prohibition of Child Medication Safety law that banned schools from forcing schoolchildren to take prescription psychotropic drugs as a requisite for their schooling.

Detroit Civil Rights attorney Allison Folmar, who has worked with CCHR International for many years, joined its advisory board stating, “Too many parents, too many families, have been harmed, misled, threatened, coerced and forced by the psychiatric industry.”

Since 1974, CCHR Germany has relentlessly documented the previously undisclosed role of Nazi psychiatrists in the murder of “mental patients” during the Holocaust. In 2010, the German psychiatric association finally acknowledged this, stating that psychiatrists had forced patients “to be sterilized, arranged their deaths and even performed killings themselves. They also murdered physically and mentally disabled children in more than 30 psychiatric and pediatric hospitals.”

CCHR has also helped secure 36 laws around the world (31 in the U.S.) making sexual abuse of patients by mental health practitioners a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment, whereas before, psychiatrists asserted such abuse was “therapy.” Spanish psychiatry was not immune to this: in 2021, the Supreme Court of Spain upheld a lower court sentence of psychiatrist Antonio Asin Cabrera to seven years in prison for sexually abusing a patient for nine years.[9]

According to Jan Eastgate, “These are but a sample of the many psychiatric human rights abuses CCHR has exposed and worked to reform. Spanish psychiatrists tried unsuccessfully to prevent public discussion of this. Such suppression of information violates the informed consent rights of patients and their families. It contradicts recent World Health Organization and UN guidelines on mental health and human rights, which CCHR chapters are aligned with the world over in a commitment to end coercive psychiatric practices.”

European Times Reports: “Victory in the Supreme Court: CCHR’s Criticism of Psychiatric Abuse Not without Factual Basis”

The European Times further reported on the monumental win, quoting, Salvador Fernández, President of CCHR Spain:

“It is important that there be protection so that the innumerable abuses that are committed in the field of psychiatry are made known, and the time has come to carry out the drastic reforms called for by the WHO, the UN, and above all, the victims, of a century-old system that has brought more pain than glory.”[10]

The article details the history of the case and how the Plenary Session of the Civil Division of the Supreme Court, affirms that the opinions and harsh criticism that CCHR International and Spain make about psychiatric abuse “are not devoid of a sufficient factual basis,” and, therefore, determined the need to protect the right to express them. As transcribed in this extract from the judgment:

“The extensive documentation submitted by [CCHR] clearly shows the existence of the debate.  The reports of the UN rapporteurs submission (specifically, the 2017 ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard and physical and mental health and the 2018 ‘Annual Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’ on ‘Mental Health and Human Rights,’) are a good illustration of the important social, political and scientific debate on the issues covered by the questioned publications.”

On this basis, the Supreme Court ruled that the SEP must bear the criticism of CCHR International and Comisión Ciudadana de Derechos Humanos de España (CCDH) in Spain.

The SEP complained about statements, such as that of CCHHR’s co-founder, a fellow-psychiatrist and Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Thomas Szasz, who said:

“Psychiatry is probably the most destructive force that has affected society in the last 60 years.”

But in an earlier judgment on 10 February 2024, which the SEP  appealed, the court determined:

CCHR “aims to fight against abuse in psychiatry and, especially, against the prescription by [psychiatrists] of drugs for the treatment and mental illnesses and diseases; its work has been recognized by the Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights who, in 1986, stated that [CCHR] had helped to pass numerous laws in the field of mental health in defense and preservation of rights of individuals, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Further, CCHR had been recognized by the U.S. House of Representatives and California State legislature.

Furthermore, even if the statements may be disturbing to the SEP, without “tolerance and a spirit of openness,” there is “no democratic society.”  The court cited European court decisions regarding freedom of speech and Constitutional Court judgment 226, 22 December 2016, which cites previous judgments and states that

“within the broad framework granted to freedom of expression are protected, according to our doctrine, ‘these manifestations which, although they affect the honor of others, are revealed as necessary for the preservation of ideas or opinions of public interest.’”

The publications and documentaries are available on https://www.cchr.org/documentaries/ and https://www.cchr.org/cchr-reports/overview.html

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[1] “The Supreme Court dismisses the claim for violation of the right to honor of the Spanish Society of Psychiatry for the criticism received from two associations,” The First Chamber of the Supreme Court, 12 July 2024

[2] Juan Sanchez Gil, “Unsilenced: Psychiatric-abuses Watchdog Wins Supreme Court Battle in Spain,” The European Times, 16 July 2024, https://europeantimes.news/2024/07/unsilenced-psychiatric-abuses-watchdog-wins-supreme-court-battle-in-spain/

[3] Ibid.

[4] https://www.cchrint.org/2019/04/19/cchr-celebrates-50-years-of-eradicating-psychiatric-abuse/

[5] Op. cit., Juan Sanchez Gil, The European Times

[6] https://www.cchrint.org/2022/12/30/lake-alice-psychiatric-hospital-children-were-tortured/

[7] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/07/01/cchrs-work-acknowledged-nz-inquiry-lake-alice-psychiatric-child-torture/

[8] https://www.cchrint.org/2024/02/23/cchr-and-electroshock-survivors-reject-apology-for-tortured-children/

[9] https://www.cchrint.org/2022/01/10/psychiatrists-wake-up-to-criticisms-of-their-industry/; “Tenerife psychiatrist gets seven years for sexually abusing patient,” Euro Weekly, 3 Dec. 2021, https://www.euroweeklynews.com/2021/12/03/tenerife-psychiatrist-gets-seven-years-for-sexually-abusing-patient/

[10] “Victory in the Supreme Court: CCHR’s criticism of psychiatric abuse not without factual basis,” European Times, 19 July 2024, https://europeantimes.news/2024/07/victory-in-the-supreme-court-cchrs-criticism-of-psychiatric-abuse-not-without-factual-basis/