Citizens Commission on Human Rights International Releases White Paper on Antidepressants and Psychiatric Drug Reform
PRESS RELEASE GlobeNewswire
Aug. 14, 2026, 06:36 PM
Los Angeles, CA, Aug. 14, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, an international mental health industry watchdog, has released a white paper titled “Antidepressants: A Public Health Catastrophe – Evidence of Harm, Decades of Cover-Up, and the Urgent Need for Reform.” The paper is available on CCHR International’s website and addresses concerns about antidepressants, psychiatric drug prescribing, informed consent, prevention, holistic care, and safe drug withdrawal. The release follows recent federal recommendations to deprescribe antidepressants and curb psychiatric drug prescribing, particularly in children, as well as Florida guidance recommending physical examinations and laboratory testing before psychotropic drugs are considered for children ages 5–17. CCHR says these developments reinforce its call for thorough medical testing to rule out physical conditions that can mimic psychiatric symptoms before psychiatric diagnoses or drug treatment are pursued.
Workable alternatives to psychiatric drugging exist and must be prioritized
Over 76 million Americans take psychiatric drugs, including about 45 million on antidepressants. Of these, 6.1 million are ages 0–17, with 2.1 million prescribed antidepressants not recommended for children because of suicide risks. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently recommended a nationwide plan to deprescribe antidepressants and curb psychiatric drug prescribing—particularly in children—prioritizing informed consent, prevention, transparency, holistic care and safe drug withdrawal.[2]
On July 24, 2026, Florida’s Guidance Statement further strengthened this position by recommending against the use of psychotropic drugs in children for treatment of mental health conditions. The guidance emphasizes that the drugs should not be stopped abruptly and that discontinuation may need to be gradual depending on the length of use
The consequences of skipping physical testing can be catastrophic. One patient endured five years of psychiatric treatment for headaches, dizziness, and a staggering gait before a medical examination finally revealed an untreated brain tumor.[3] In 2025, Sarah-Jane Doherty, 24, from Doncaster in Yorkshire, UK, experienced extreme exhaustion, depressive episodes, psychosis, hallucinations, mood changes, vision problems, headaches, and electric-shock sensations down her arm. She was wrongly diagnosed as bipolar and prescribed an antipsychotic that worsened her condition. On June 23, 2026, she was taken to emergency care where a CT scan and MRI revealed a brain tumor that required surgery.[4]
CCHR’s 57-year experience as a mental health industry watchdog has repeatedly found that psychiatrists fail to properly diagnose medical conditions. In 1982, CCHR helped orchestrate a California law that established a pilot project to provide medical evaluation of people admitted to public psychiatric hospitals. CCHR was represented on the advisory committee overseeing the pilot. The findings, published in 1989, showed that many patients studied had a physical disease that had been undiagnosed by mental health professionals and defined the medical tests that should be conducted. Fully 80 percent of those screened showed neurologic abnormalities, many induced by the psychotropic drugs themselves. The California Mental Health Medical Evaluation Field Manual says mental health professionals “have a professional and a legal obligation to recognize the presence of physical disease in their patients.”[5]
CCHR was founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology together with the late Dr. Thomas Szasz, professor of psychiatry at SUNY Upstate. Szasz long observed that “there is no blood or other biological test to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness, as there is for most bodily diseases. If such a test were developed, then the condition would cease to be a mental illness and would be classified as a symptom of a bodily disease.”
The CATO Institute confirms that psychiatric diagnoses differ from most of medicine because they rely on subjective mental and behavioral phenomena instead of physical symptoms or biomarkers. The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has progressively broadened the boundaries of major psychiatric categories over successive revisions. Cato states, “There is reason to believe that psychiatric diagnoses have become less precise, not more… When diagnosis is subjective, and payment depends on diagnosis, the system will reward expanding the definition of illness,” and there is “little ability to assess whether patients are better off.”[6]
The DSM-IV-TR itself notes the importance of distinguishing general medical conditions from mental disorders through thorough evaluation. The symptoms of “Major Depressive Disorder” are “identical to the characteristic signs and symptoms of general medical conditions (e.g., weight loss with untreated diabetes, fatigue with cancer).”[7]
Dr. Mary Ann Block, DO, is unequivocal about the need for thorough medical testing: “Everyone deserves to have a physician who will take a thorough history, do a complete physical exam, and look for the true underlying medical cause of a person’s symptoms. No one should accept a doctor who just listens to your chief complaint and hands you a prescription.”[8]
Antidepressants can produce some serious adverse effects. In response, CCHR International released a white paper, Antidepressants: A Public Health Catastrophe – Evidence of Harm, Decades of Cover-Up, and the Urgent Need for Reform, which is available on its website
Jan Eastgate, President of CCHR International, states: “Workable alternatives to psychiatric drugging exist and must be prioritized. The evidence from Florida’s guidance, the California pilot studies, and physicians shows that thorough medical evaluation routinely uncovers treatable physical causes and ends the need for mind-altering drugs. The federal deprescribing initiative, with its emphasis on consent, prevention, and holistic care, offers a critical opportunity to embed mandatory medical testing as standard practice nationwide.”
CCHR concludes that protecting patients from unnecessary drug exposure begins with ruling out real, treatable medical disease
[1] “Avoidance of Psychotropic Pharmacotherapy in Children Age 5–17: Guidance Statement,”Florida Department of Health, Office of the State Surgeon General, 24 July 2026
[2] “HHS Launches MAHA Action Plan to Curb Psychiatric Overprescribing,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 4 May 2026
[3] Tomas Bjorkman, “Many Wrongs in Psychiatric Care,” Dagens Nyheter, 25 Jan. 1998
[4] “‘I was misdiagnosed as mentally ill until doctors learned terrifying truth a year later.’” Daily Mirror, 10 July 2026
[5] Lorrin M. Koran, M.D., Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, MEDICAL EVALUATION FIELD MANUAL, Stanford, CA, 1991, pp. 3-4, 18
[6] “How the American Healthcare System Rewards Psychiatric Overdiagnosis,” CATO at Liberty, 21 Mar. 2026
[7] DSM-IV-TR, pgs. 181, 351
[8] Mary Anne Block, DO, Just Because You’re Depressed Doesn’t Mean You Have Depression (Block Systems Books, 2007), pp. viii, 8
About Citizens Commission on Human Rights International
Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is an international mental health industry watchdog, established by the Church of Scientology, which has helped enact more than 190 worldwide reforms that protect the public from abuse
Press Inquiries
Amber Rauscher media [at] cchr.org 323-467-4242https://www.cchrint.org 6616 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028
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