In Greece, local members of CCHR worked with a national television show to expose an Athens psychiatric institution that was holding children naked and shackled to their beds in a ward of mentally handicapped adults. After the show aired in 1996, the abusive psychiatric ward was shut down.

“CCHR is the only organisation in the world that really fights for the rights of people who have suffered at the hands of psychiatry.” Through exhibitions and hearings, CCHR has brought to light the continuing outrages of psychiatry, including its involuntary commitment procedures and many other human rights abuses.

In 2003, the local CCHR chapter worked with other organisations to prevent passage of an involuntary commitment law in Russia that wouldhave empowered psychiatrists to arbitrarily commit citizens, including adolescents, to a psychiatric facility without a legal proceeding or recourse. The measure was stopped after members of CCHR staged events and protests, briefed officials of the Duma and collected thousands of signatures protesting the law.

On a grimmer note, the Russian chapter of CCHR discovered and exposed that the St. Petersburg’s Brain Institute had conducted psychosurgery on 300 drug addicts, to “handle” their dependencies. Many were teenagers, and with CCHR’s help, one young man who sued the Institute was finally compensated after it was proven he was harmfully experimented on, in violation of the Nuremberg Code and the European Convention on Human Rights.