Without the protection of basic human rights, there can only be diminished mental health. Yet psychiatry routinely violates the human rights of those who seek its help. With this inherent contradiction in psychiatry itself, it has fallen to outside groups to protect those who are victimised by psychiatry’s inhumanity.

To that end, in 1969 CCHR members penned a Declaration of Human Rights for “mental patients”. Since then CCHR has pushed to introduce a patients’ Bill of Rights, sending reports to the United Nations on the need to secure human rights in the mental health field. By 1991, the UN General Assembly had adopted a statement of rights entitled “The Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and the Improvement of Mental Health Care”, including patients’ rights to refuse treatment, and when treated, that they be guaranteed their basic human and civil rights.

Such protections are vital, but CCHR also forwards initiatives to bring about genuine advancements in the field of mental health.

Our institutions must become safe havens where people can come without the fear of incarceration or enforced treatment. Patients need a quiet environment, good nutrition, rest and exercise.

Another important factor is that undiagnosed and untreated physical conditions can manifest as “psychiatric” symptoms, and so such facilities must also include medical diagnostic equipment and proper medical—not psychiatric—screening, to detect underlying physical conditions contributing to emotional and mental difficulties.

As psychiatrists largely ignore this factor, CCHR has persistently advocated for non-psychiatric medical evaluation of people with mental problems. The findings of a pilot study, participated in by CCHR, published in the 1989 edition of Archives of General Psychiatry, confirmed that many patients had an active, important physical disease unknown to their mental health attendants.

Outside our institutions, consider the massive numbers of children and adults being diagnosed today as “hyperactive.” Yet in the course of evaluating seriously troubled adolescents, as just one example, many researchers have discovered teens, when their diets were corrected, had significant behaviour improvements.

Thus, it remains a policy of CCHR that anyone with a physical or mental condition should first see a competent, non-psychiatric physician to locate what untreated, undiagnosed physical condition might be causing so-called “psychiatric” symptoms. CCHR does not give medical or legal advice, but it does advocate standard medical care.