April 24, 2009

NEW YORK – "Psychiatry: An Industry of Death," is a traveling exhibit which has shocked public and experts alike with its graphic depiction of historical and current horrors including the drugging of 10 million schoolchildren in America, the continued administration of electroshock in America, and rampant fraud in psychiatric diagnosis and "treatment." It officially opened its 10 week run in NY with speeches by human rights experts and a ribbon-cutting, April 14th.

"The shocking death of Jamaican immigrant Esmin Green at King's County Hospital is a particularly tragic example of psychiatric abuse," said Joya Dwight, of Citizens Commission on Human Rights, the sponsoring group.

"Other abuses, including the continued practice of electroshock in New York State, show this is a pattern, not an exception. The exhibit shows the arrogant disregard for humanity which caused Esmin Green's death is built into the ideology and practice of the psychiatric industry, truly an Industry of Death. "

The exhibit includes 14 video panels of sometimes gut-wrenching historical footage, documentation, and testimony from medical doctors, human rights experts, law enforcement officials, and victims of psychiatric brutality.

The documentation is exhaustive, from the origins of psychiatry in the 1770s, where locking up "lunatics" became a lucrative way to cash in on human misery; to the psychiatric theory of eugenics, which justified not only the Holocaust, but racism in America, South Africa and elsewhere.

Another panel shows the abuse of Soviet dissenters whose "search for justice" was defined as a mental disorder to justify their imprisonment, and still another shows how false diagnosis of mental illness is used to bilk billions out of governments and public alike.

It is mounted by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (http://www.cchr.org/), founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at Syracuse University of New York Health Science Center.

CCHR leaders from New York and the Tri-State area were joined by Ms. Linda Andre, author of "Doctors of Deception: What They Don't Want You to Know About Shock Treatment" just released by Rutgers University Press.

"Shock therapy still damages a hundred thousand people in the US every year," said Andre. "In fact, despite propaganda to the contrary, it is even more damaging now than it was in the 50s and 60s. These are not even difficult facts to find out – you just have to get the facts, and not just trust a psychiatrist because you think he is like other doctors."

Also joining the group was Doug Henderson, Esq, activist attorney, author, and Director of Operations of Gary Null and Associates. His organization has done its own documentation of the use of psychiatric drugs on our schoolchildren, and the disastrous results.

"There is a revolution coming, as people become aware of these abuses," said Henderson. "You need to get the facts, so you don't sleep through the revolution."

The exhibit is free and will be open to the public, 11 am until 7 pm, at 230 Fifth Ave., at 27th Street, in Suite 300, Monday - Saturday, until the end of June.

Church of Scientology New York