New Exhibit Shows Racist Roots of Psychiatry
CITIZENS COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS NEW YORK
PRESS RELEASE
For further information:
John Carmichael
(646) 509-1857
EXHIBIT EXPOSES PSYCHIATRIC INDUSTRY
AS SOURCE OF RACISM AND OTHER ABUSES
NEW YORK (May 1, 2009)—“Psychiatry: An Industry of Death,” a traveling exhibit showing the damaging effect of the institution on society, shows how psychiatry has provided justification for slavery, genocide, and other racist atrocities internationally. Its 14 video panels with the testimony of a wide variety of experts are open to the public in Manhattan through the end of June.
“Psychiatry, unlike other medical specialties, is a tool for domination of others,” said Ms. Joya Dwight, Executive Director of Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), the group who assembled the exhibit. “In the early days of the US, psychiatrists pushed the theory that Africans were black because of a disease called ‘negritude,’ and that slaves who wanted to escape to freedom suffered from a mental illness called ‘drapetomania.’
“Since that time, psychiatrists have pushed newer but equally phony theories to justify apartheid and racism in Europe, South Africa, America, and elsewhere. All this is a justification for political repression and the treatment of people which is betrayal, not help,” Ms. Dwight continued. “It is vital that everyone finds out the facts so that they can protect themselves, their families and their community.”
The exhibit covers the origins of psychiatry in the 1600s, where cruel physical abuse and the inducement were overtly advocated as treatments for “lunacy.” It includes the current resurgence of electroshock –- still administered to 100,000 every year -– and the drugging of 8 to 10 million schoolchildren with potent drugs. It gives figures and names a few of the names of the many psychiatrists who have gone to jail for crimes, including their participation in an epidemic of psychiatric rape.
“There is no excuse, no justification, no science behind these abuses,” said Dwight. “The exhibit features physicians, lawyers, human rights activists, historians, and parents who tell it as it is.”
The display was put together by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (www.cchr.org), a watchdog group 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.
The exhibit was opened April 14 to a standing-room-only crowd including CCHR leaders and Ms. Linda Andre, author of Doctors of Deception: What They Don’t Want You to Know About Shock Treatment published by Rutgers University Press.
Also in the group was Doug Henderson, Esq., activist attorney, author, and Director of Operations of Gary Null and Associates. He added his voice to those of other investigators who consider psychiatry a fraud.
There is no charge to the public to the exhibit, which is open from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. at 230 Fifth Avene, at 27th Street, in Suite 300, Monday through Saturday, until the end of June.
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1) Left to right, Doug Henderson, Joya Dwight (CCHR New York), Linda Andre, and Noelle Talevi (CCHR Tri-State) cut the ribbon to officially open the exhibit.
2) A panel, “Oppression of Blacks and Minorities,” gets a reaction.
3) Psychiatry has destroyed the lives of innumerable artists, many of them known.
Cheryl L. Duncan
President & CEO
Cheryl Duncan & Company Inc.
Public Relations & Events
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