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Associated Press
27-05-2025
- General
- Associated Press
CCHR Seeks End to Mandated Community Psychiatric Programs, Citing Global Alarm
LOS ANGELES, Calif., May 27, 2025 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR), a mental health industry watchdog, is calling for an overhaul of psychiatric hospitalization and community treatment laws. With 54% of U.S. psychiatric patients held involuntarily, CCHR warns the system has normalized coercion. Most U.S. states authorize Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) laws that compel individuals in the community to receive psychiatric treatment—typically drug-based—under threat of court orders or rehospitalization. Critics say the laws criminalize noncompliance and medicalize dissent. A Pennsylvania source reported that under AOT, 'noncompliance is pathologized, autonomy is dismissed…Treatment ceases to be chosen; it becomes imposed.'[1] A 2021 NIH-funded study published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology found that 70% of youth aged 16–27 who were involuntarily hospitalized reported long-lasting distrust of clinicians—even when they remained in therapy. Meanwhile, a Cochrane Review concluded that AOT laws showed no consistent benefit over voluntary care.[2] Many mental health consumers are also forced to accept involuntary treatment in the community by being made subject to community treatment orders (CTOs), under threat that non-compliance can result in them being detained against their will in inpatient facilities and institutions.[3] A broader 2016 systematic review published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry analyzed more than 80 studies on CTOs, including three randomized controlled trials and multiple meta-analyses. The result: 'No evidence of patient benefit.' CTOs did not reduce hospitalizations or improve quality of life—but did result in patients spending significantly more time under coercive state psychiatric control.[4] Patients are often forced onto antipsychotic drugs. Bioethicist Carl Elliott says such neuroleptics cause 'tardive dyskinesia, a writhing, twitching motion of the mouth and tongue that can be permanent.' Psychotropic drug side effects can include violent behavior, aggression, paranoia, psychosis, dangerously high body temperatures, irregular heartbeat, and heart conditions, disorientation, delusion, lack of coordination, suicidal tendencies, and numerous physical problems.[5] Jan Eastgate, President of CCHR International says, 'Ironically, the very side effects of antipsychotic drugs—such as agitation and aggression—are the same behaviors often cited to justify forced hospitalization and involuntary treatment in the first place.' Yet, under AOT regimes, complaints about side effects or treatment refusals are used against patients as evidence of illness. The term 'anosognosia'—defined as an inability to recognize one's illness—is routinely invoked to override consent, framing resistance as delusional and justifying further force. As one media source put it: 'It casts resistance as malfunction… Instead of seeing dissent as meaningful or contextual, it reframes it as a symptom of a broken brain. This framing is not just misguided—it's dangerous.'[6] Amalia Gamio, Vice Chair of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, helped open CCHR's Traveling Exhibit, Psychiatry: An Industry of Death in Los Angeles on May 17, denounced global psychiatric coercion: 'Involuntary medication, electroshock, even sterilization — these are inhuman practices. Under international law, they constitute torture. There is an urgent need to ban all coercive and non-consensual measures in psychiatric settings.' Rev. Frederick Shaw, Jr., President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Inglewood-South Bay Branch, condemned how psychiatry disproportionately targets African Americans. 'More than 27% of Black youth—already impacted by racism—are pathologized with labels like 'Oppositional Defiant Disorder,' which has no medical test,' he said. 'This mirrors how Black civil rights leaders in the 1960s were once labeled with 'protest psychosis' to justify drugging them with antipsychotics,' he added. 'Psychiatry didn't just participate in suppressing Black voices—it orchestrated it. And they're still doing it.' Psychiatric diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) are not discovered through scientific testing but are voted into existence by APA committees. CCHR says despite the absence of objective medical proof for these labels, they can create lifelong patients to be drugged and subjected to involuntary interventions. Forced psychiatric practices have been condemned by the United Nations (UN) and World Health Organization (WHO), which have repeatedly called for an end to forced institutionalization, electroshock, drugging, and community-based coercive measures.[7] In the U.S., over 37% of children and youth in psychiatric facilities are subjected to seclusion or restraint.[8] Some—as young as 7—have died under these conditions. In multiple cases, medical examiners ruled the deaths homicides, yet prosecutions have been rare.[9] 'This is not mental healthcare. This is systemic cruelty and homicide,' adds Eastgate. CCHR and its global network are demanding regulations that prohibit coercive psychiatric treatment. 'These are abuses. Forced treatment is torture passed off as mental health 'care,'' CCHR says. About CCHR: The group was co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and psychiatrist and author Prof. Thomas Szasz. CCHR has exposed and helped bring accountability for psychiatric abuses globally. Its advocacy now echoes international calls by the UN and WHO to end coercive mental health practices. To learn more, visit: SOURCES: [1] 'Brave New Pittsburgh: Forced Use of Psychotropic Pharmaceuticals is Coming,' Popular Rationalism, 16 May 2025, [2] [3] 'Ensuring compulsory treatment is used as a last resort: a narrative review of the knowledge about Community Treatment Orders,' Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 6 Jan 2025, [4] [5] Susan Perry, 'Recruitment of homeless people for drug trials raises serious ethical issues, U bioethicist says,' MinnPost, 11 Aug. 2014, [6] 'Not Broken, Not Sick: A Rebellion Against the Anosognosia Frame,' Underground Transmissions, 13 May 2025 [7] World Health Organization, 'Guidance on mental health policy and strategic action plans,' Module 1, pp 3-4, 2025 [8] Mohr, W, 'Adverse Effects Associated With Physical Restraint,' The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry—Review Paper, June 2003, [9] Deborah Yetter, '7-year-old died at Kentucky youth treatment center due to suffocation, autopsy finds; 2 workers fired,' USA Today, 19 Sept. 2022, Taylor Johnston, ''He didn't deserve that': Remembering young people who've died from restraint and seclusion,' CT Insider, 31 Oct. 2022, MULTIMEDIA: Image link for media: Image caption: 'Involuntary medication, electroshock, even sterilization — these are inhuman practices. Under international law, they constitute torture. There is an urgent need to ban all coercive and non-consensual measures in psychiatric settings.' – Amalia Gamio, Vice Chair of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. NEWS SOURCE: Citizens Commission on Human Rights Keywords: Religion and Churches, Citizens Commission on Human Rights, CCHR International, CCHR International, Jan Eastgate, coercive psychiatry, LOS ANGELES, Calif. This press release was issued on behalf of the news source (Citizens Commission on Human Rights) who is solely responsibile for its accuracy, by Send2Press® Newswire. Information is believed accurate but not guaranteed. Story ID: S2P126451 APNF0325A To view the original version, visit: © 2025 Send2Press® Newswire, a press release distribution service, Calif., USA. RIGHTS GRANTED FOR REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART BY ANY LEGITIMATE MEDIA OUTLET - SUCH AS NEWSPAPER, BROADCAST OR TRADE PERIODICAL. MAY NOT BE USED ON ANY NON-MEDIA WEBSITE PROMOTING PR OR MARKETING SERVICES OR CONTENT DEVELOPMENT. Disclaimer: This press release content was not created by nor issued by the Associated Press (AP). Content below is unrelated to this news story.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Do Face Masks Work?
This week marks five years since March 13, 2020, the day President Donald Trump declared a national state of emergency over the novel coronavirus outbreak. The White House issued the President's Coronavirus Guidelines for America three days later. Among other things, the guidelines advised Americans to avoid bars, restaurants, shopping trips, and social visits. They also said that governors in states with evidence of community transmission should close schools, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues. Sticking to peer-reviewed science, and setting aside the political question of what the government should do with the information, what do we know now about the ways people tried to protect themselves from the virus? Over the next few days we'll look at several measures—ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, the vaccines—as well as the matter of how many Americans died of COVID infections. Today we'll tackle face coverings. Early in the pandemic, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief Anthony Fauci notoriously announced on 60 Minutes that Americans "should not be walking around with masks." This was a reprise of Surgeon General Jerome Adams' February 29 tweet: "Seriously people. STOP BUYING MASKS!" Adams added, "They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!" A little over a month later, the government did an abrupt U-turn, with Trump announcing on April 3 that the surgeon general and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were now recommending that Americans voluntarily wear cloth masks in public to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Federal officials still wanted to reserve surgical masks and N95 masks for frontline health care workers. States then began introducing requirements that individuals wear face coverings in public. By the end of the year, 39 states would adopt such measures. These contradictory signals helped politicize facial masks. The controversy was further stoked by a January 2023 Cochrane Library analysis that was widely interpreted by many, including some of my Reason colleagues, as concluding that "masks don't work." In March 2023, Cochrane's editor issued a statement. "Many commentators have claimed that a recently-updated Cochrane Review shows that 'masks don't work', which is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation," wrote Karla Soares-Weiser. "It would be accurate to say that the review examined whether interventions to promote mask wearing help to slow the spread of respiratory viruses, and that the results were inconclusive." It takes at least two sides to politicize an issue. A July 1, 2020, op-ed in The New York Times compared refusing to wear a mask to "driving drunk" and the San Francisco Examiner on July 15, 2020, asserted "not wearing a mask makes you selfish, not an independent thinker." Mask skeptics were denounced as "covidiots." Five years after the COVID-19 emergency was declared, has more conclusive evidence emerged one way or the other? Masks are a big category: There are cloth masks, surgical masks, N95 respirators that block 95 percent of small particles. People use them both as source control—that is, to reduce the spread of respiratory droplet to others when an infected person talks, sneezes or coughs—and as respiratory protection for uninfected wearers. A June 2024 meta-analysis in the journal Clinical Microbiology Reviews synthesized evidence from more than 100 studies and reviews. It found that masks, "if correctly and consistently worn," are "effective in reducing transmission of respiratory diseases and show a dose-response effect." It also found that, N95 and KN95 masks were more effective than surgical or cloth masks. Using data from jurisdictions with mask mandates, the researchers concluded that "mask mandates are, overall, effective in reducing community transmission of respiratory pathogens." The efficacy of masks alone does not settle the question of mask mandates, which is far more complex. In their comprehensive 2024 report, Effectiveness of masks and respirators against respiratory infections, researchers associated with the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health reviewed 153 research articles on the effectiveness of mask use against infective agents or airborne droplets and particles. They reported that 128 of the articles they analyzed found masks to be effective. They noted that "systematic reviews of on randomized controlled trial studies in clinical or community settings demonstrated effectiveness in 10 out of 16 studies, and 20 out of 23 studies found mask mandates to be effective." A July BMJ 2024 article reported the results of a randomized controlled trial by a team of Norwegian researchers. They assigned half of their cohort of nearly 5,000 subjects to wear three-ply surgical masks in public spaces—shopping centers, streets, public transport, etc.—over a 14-day period. The researchers reported that 163 participants of 2,371 assigned to wear face masks versus 239 of 2,276 of non-wearers self-reported respiratory symptoms. The researchers concluded that "the results support the claim that face masks may be an effective measure to reduce the incidence of self-reported respiratory symptoms consistent with respiratory tract infections, but the effect size was moderate." In February 2025, the BMJ published a review evaluating the role of masks and respirators in preventing respiratory infections in health care and community settings. The British team noted the difficulty of evaluating studies conducted in the midst of an ongoing epidemic, but it concluded that "there is ample evidence on the effectiveness of masks and respirators in community and healthcare settings to inform consistent policy." It also concluded found that community mask use is effective during periods of increased transmission. The Finnish report noted that several early randomized controlled trials did not find community masking to be effective at preventing respiratory illnesses. In a March 2024 article in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, two researchers at Columbia University probed the discrepancy between mask efficacy as measured by laboratory experiments versus randomized controlled trials out in the real world. They found that individual masking behaviors—most specifically, disease transmission within households where masks are rarely used—limits mask efficacy in randomized controlled trials. Nevertheless, the researchers concluded that at the individual and population levels, masking effectively reduces the risk of infection and lowers epidemic intensity. Upshot: From the perspective of five years, most research finds that facial masking is at least modestly effective for preventing and slowing down the spread of respiratory illnesses like COVID-19. The post Do Face Masks Work? appeared first on
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Water fluoridation expansion given green light
The biggest expansion of water fluoridation in England since the 1980s is to go ahead, officials have announced. The Government estimates that the expansion of the water fluoridation programme across the North East will reach an additional 1.6 million people. It is hoped that the scheme will reduce the number of tooth extractions due to decay, particularly in deprived areas. Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral found in water and some foods. In the early 20th century, researchers found that people had less tooth decay in areas with higher fluoride levels in the drinking water. Many areas have enough naturally occurring fluoride in drinking water. In other parts of the country levels are manually adjusted as part of a fluoridation scheme. UK schemes involving adding fluoride to water date back to the 1960s, starting in the Midlands. [1/2] The #Gvt has announced plans to extend the current water fluoridation scheme in the North East to reach an extra 1.6m people. Water fluoridation is the single most effective #PublicHealth measure for ⬇️tooth decay – the leading cause of 🏥admissions for 5-9 yr olds. — Association of Directors of Public Health (ADPH) (@ADPHUK) March 25, 2024 Around 10% of people in England currently have fluoride added to their drinking water, mostly in the West Midlands and the North East, including Newcastle and Gateshead. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) confirmed that, following public consultation last year, the Government will press ahead with the expansion of community water fluoridation across the North East of England. This will be the first significant expansion of water fluoridation in England since the 1980s. Around half of the North East already has fluoridated water. The consultation proposed that the programme should expand across the region to Darlington; Durham; Gateshead; Hartlepool; Middlesbrough; Newcastle; Northumberland; North Tyneside; Redcar and Cleveland; South Tyneside; Stockton and Sunderland. 'The findings of all health monitoring reports since 2014 consistently show that water fluoridation is an effective and safe public health measure to reduce the prevalence and severity of tooth decay and reduce dental health inequalities,' DHSC said in a statement. A review examining the benefit of such schemes, which was published in October, concluded the benefits of fluoridating water supplies appear to have declined since the 1970s when fluoride toothpaste became widely available in the UK. Overall, water fluoridation 'may lead to slightly more children being free of tooth decay' and 'may lead to slightly less tooth decay in children's baby teeth', according to the updated Cochrane Review. The news comes as the Government launched its national supervised toothbrushing campaign across the most deprived areas of England. Commenting, Eddie Crouch, chairman of the British Dental Association, said: 'Water fluoridation has been around since the Second World War. 'Supervised brushing since Victorian times. 'Tried and tested policies, but it shows we need real pace here. 'Building an NHS dental service fit for the future won't wait till the 22nd Century.' Dr Urshla Devalia, spokeswoman for the British Society of Paediatric Dentistry, said: 'At last, we will see the dial shift on children's oral health in England. 'BSPD has been advocating for the importance of a preventative approach to address the crisis in children's oral health for years. 'Intervening now with a supervised toothbrushing scheme, plus community water fluoridation programmes, are initiatives proven to deliver beneficial oral health outcomes that will pay for themselves severalfold in the future.'
