CCHR Protests the Drugging of Children at Florida Psychiatric Society Meeting

2024-04-18 11:17:53 News & Society

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The [Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR)], a non-profit mental health watchdog dedicated to the eradication of abuses committed under the guise of mental health, is holding a protest march in St. Petersburg, Florida on September 24th, at the Florida Psychiatric Society annual meeting in response to the psychiatric drugging of children.

In response to the drugging of children with dangerous psychiatric drugs, CCHR is holding a protest at the Florida Psychiatric Society 2016 Fall Meeting in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida on Saturday, September 24, 2016. Anyone interested in joining the protest should contact CCHR Florida at (727) 442-8820. The protestors will meet up at 11:30am at Pioneer Park on 1st Avenue S. to start the march.

Currently 8 million U.S. children are being prescribed psychiatric drugs, with more than 1 million between the ages of zero to five.[1] Children are being drugged simply because psychiatry has pathologized normal childhood behaviors, and repackaged them as mental disorders. The result is that millions of children are being drugged for behaviors reclassified by psychiatry as disease.

Just last year a draft report from the research arm of Florida's child-protection system showed that foster children are being put on psychotropic medications without caregivers following proper procedures and that 11 percent of the children in foster care had active prescriptions for at least one psychotropic drug. Additionally, a review of 140 children's files showed that just 20 percent of these children met all the key requirements for administering such medication.[2]

The Florida policies for using psychotropic drugs on foster kids was updated after the tragic death of 7-year-old [Gabriel Myers](http://www.cchrflorida.org/?s=Gabriel) in 2009, who was found hanging from a shower fixture in his foster home, an apparent suicide, after having been prescribed two black box medications intended for adults.

We have the situation with foster children but we also have suicide being the 3rd leading cause of death of teenagers in Florida and it is known that the antidepressants that are being prescribed to these teens can and do cause suicide. It is a side effect of the drug, stated Diane Stein, President CCHR Florida.

Unfortunately, mental health has been reduced to the prescribing of antidepressants or antipsychotic drugs and new research shows that the trend is worsening especially among children less than 2 years of age.[3]

Reports show that psychotropic drug prescriptions among babies doubled from 2013 to 2014 and that psychiatrists are prescribing these drugs to young children and babies for aggression, temper tantrums, or lethargy despite the more than 400,000 adverse reaction reports filed with the U.S. FDA.[4]

For more information on the protest march please call (727) 442-8820 or email info@cchrflorida.org.

About CCHR:

Initially established by the Church of Scientology and renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz in 1969, CCHRs mission is to eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections.

It was L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, who brought the terror of psychiatric imprisonment to the notice of the world. In March 1969, he said, Thousands and thousands are seized without process of law, every week, over the free world tortured, castrated, killed. All in the name of mental health.

After discovering that 55 percent of foster children in Florida had been prescribed powerful mind-altering psychotropic drugs, CCHR documented the abuse to the health department, which initiated changes that led to a 75 percent reduction in prescriptions for children under six.

For more information please visit http://www.cchrflorida.org/

SOURCES:

[1] cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/children-on-psychiatric-drugs/

[2] orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2015/09/22/report-finds-florida-foster-kids-put-on-psychotropic-drugs-without-following-proper-procedures

[3] medicaldaily.com/psychiatric-drugs-babies-more-kids-aged-2-and-under-getting-prescribed-antipsychotics-365236

[4] cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/