A traveling exhibit from the non-profit Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) opened in Austin, Texas, exposing historical and ongoing human rights violations in the field of psychiatry. The exhibit features graphic panels and video excerpts from the documentary Psychiatry: An Industry of Death, chronicling abuses from pseudoscientific theories to brutal treatments like lobotomies and electroconvulsive therapy, and the current widespread prescription of psychotropic drugs.
Lee Spiller, Director of the Texas chapter of CCHR, highlighted the importance of learning from history to prevent its repetition. "Knowing history is supposed to be the best protection against history repeating itself," Spiller said. "Ironically, and in spite of global efforts to reduce force and coercion in psychiatric treatment, psychiatry seems bent on repeating such history."
Nelson Linder, President of the Austin NAACP, emphasized the critical need to promote human rights. "There has never been a more important time to promote human rights," Linder stated. "Working together, we can and should protect the rights of those accused of being mentally ill. There is absolutely no reason that someone should lose basic human rights because of a label."
Spiller recalled decades of collaboration with groups like the NAACP, including a protest 30 years ago against a psychiatrist who claimed that foster children—predominantly Black and Brown—were heavily drugged due to "bad gene pools." Spiller noted, "Psychiatry should have dispensed with these ideas centuries ago." Linder affirmed the need for continued dialogue, saying, "We will continue to speak. We must continue to have these conversations because the rights of people to live in peace and dignity depend on it."
Other speakers addressed parental rights in school mental health and the importance of rights education. One attendee described how CCHR's information helped his family navigate an emergency psychiatric detention. "The information we received from CCHR helped us to get through this and come out the other side," he said. "I'm not happy about it, but the information from CCHR, and their calming influence made it bearable."
The traveling exhibit will tour major cities in the Western United States, warning parents and community members about the dangers of psychiatric treatments. CCHR has 14 identical exhibits worldwide. For more information, visit the CCHR website, or watch documentaries on the work of CCHR volunteers and the film Psychiatry: An Industry of Death on the Scientology Network.
