Visitors viewing the ECT display, one of the many presentations at the traveling "Psychiatry: An Industry of Death" exhibit, hosted by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Sacramento.

CCHR brings exhibit to Old Sacramento to educate visitors on the harm caused by ECT and urge victims to report how they have been damaged.

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA, USA, September 2, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) of Sacramento opened its traveling exhibit, “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death,” on Friday in Old Sacramento. The exhibit is the latest step by CCHR warning people of the devastating effects of electroshock therapy and urging victims to report how they’ve been damaged.

According to Executive Director Jim Van Hill, “The reports can assist patients to seek compensation for being seriously harmed and also help to get electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) banned. In doing so, this can protect others from being subjected to what many survivors call torture.”

More than one million people worldwide, including an estimated 100,000 Americans, are electroshocked each year including the elderly, pregnant women and children.[1] In California, CCHR was instrumental in getting its use in minors banned in 1976. Many patients are involuntary, with ECT forced on them.[2]

Electroshock therapy, a lucrative $3 - $5.4 billion a year industry[3], sends as much as 460 volts of electricity through the brain resulting in a seizure. According to research, at least one-third of patients have experienced permanent amnesia.[4] Among the other risks are cognitive and memory dysfunction, brain damage, and death.[5]

Despite ECT’s documented dangers, psychiatrists claim electroshock can deter suicide, which CCHR says is grossly misleading. A February 2023 study published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica found that after receiving electroshock, patients were 44 times more likely to die by suicide than people in the general population.[6]

The United Nations even calls ECT torture. In July 2018, the UN Human Rights Council report on “Mental health and human rights” called on governments to recognize that forced psychiatric treatment, including ECT, are “practices constituting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment….”[7]

Anyone wishing to report the injurious effects of ECT can use the Psychiatric Diagnosis Abuse Report Form available on the CCHR website here. The report can be provided to legal representatives to potentially take further action.

Public are invited to tour the free exhibit at 106 L Street, Old Sacramento. It is open through Labor Day, August 4th. Self-guided tours are available daily from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm.

In addition to an in-depth section on ECT, the exhibit has documentaries and displays revealing the results of 40 years of investigation into psychiatry and its treatments. These include the psychiatric drugging of children, the relationship between psychiatric drugs and mass shootings and the role of these drugs in the staggering rate of suicide among our military and veterans.

The exhibit's theme is patterned after a museum at the Los Angeles headquarters of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a psychiatric watchdog group with 170 chapters worldwide. Co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and the late Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, CCHR investigates and exposes psychiatric violations of human rights.

For more information, go to www.cchrint.org.

References

[1] Vabren Watts, “Psychiatrists Discuss Benefits, Risks of ECT,” Psychiatric News, 15 Jun 2015, http://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.pn.2015.6b16?trendmdshared=.

[2] “Documented Facts and Statistics about Modern Electroshock, Citizens Commission on Human Rights International,” https://www.cchrint.org/electroshock/

[3] “Which Gets a Psychiatrist More Money? An ATM Machine? Or an ECT Machine?” Citizens Commission on Human Rights,
https://www.cchr.org/ban-ect/the-truth-about-electroshock/which-gets-a-psychiatrist-more-money.html

[4] “Documented Facts and Statistics about Modern Electroshock, Citizens Commission on Human Rights International,” https://www.cchrint.org/electroshock/

[5] Harold Robertson, Robin Pryor, “Memory and cognitive effects of ECT: informing and assessing patients,” Advances in Psychiatric Treatment May 2006, 12 (3) 228-237; DOI: 10.1192/apt.12.3.228, http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/12/3/228.full.

[6] Spanggård, A., Rohde, C., & Østergaard, S. (2023). Risk factors for suicide among patients having received treatment with electroconvulsive therapy: A nationwide study of 11,780 patients. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. Published online on 6 Feb, 2023; https://www.madinamerica.com/2023/02/ect-does-not-seem-to-prevent-suicide/

[7] “Mental health and human rights: Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development,” Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General, Human Rights Council, 10-28 Sept. 2018, p. 14, point 46.

Media Coordinator
Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Sacramento
+1 916-447-4599
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