{"id":131927,"date":"2025-12-22T06:00:39","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T11:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/?p=131927"},"modified":"2025-12-29T16:10:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T21:10:18","slug":"cchr-fda-oversight-failure-driving-national-crisis-in-psychiatric-drug-harm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/cchr-fda-oversight-failure-driving-national-crisis-in-psychiatric-drug-harm\/","title":{"rendered":"CCHR: FDA Oversight Failure Driving National Crisis in Psychiatric Drug Harm"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES, Calif., Dec. 22, 2025 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR)<\/a> is raising alarms over the widespread, little-known fact that many psychiatric drugs are addictive, disfiguring, and capable of producing catastrophic neurological damage. This is harm that the group says now warrants a federal investigation into how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has allowed such risks to proliferate for decades.<\/p>\n

\"CCHR
Image caption: CCHR exposes oversight failures that enabled decades of addiction and neurological injury from psychiatric drugs. Its new documentary reveals how industry influence and diagnostic labels conceal widespread harm and escalating public health risks.<\/em><\/p>\n

Foremost among these dangers is akathisia, a tormenting drug-induced condition that can drive even the most stable individual into extreme agitation, self-destructive impulses, and unpredictable violence. CCHR\u2019s new documentary, “Prescription for Violence<\/a>,” exposes how frequently this reaction has been downplayed or ignored despite decades of consumer reports and medical warnings.<\/p>\n

Psychiatrist Samuel Lee describes akathisia as \u201crestlessness, not being comfortable in your body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Victims in the CCHR film put it more bluntly: \u201cAkathisia is internal torment, it\u2019s physical and emotional torment, you can’t get away from it\u2026It’s like hell.\u201d And \u201cAkathisia, it won\u2019t kill you, it will make you want to kill yourself. It\u2019s the feeling of ants, or fire, or electricity coursing head to toe\u2026Death is the welcome thought,\u201d as it would be \u201cthe only relief.\u201d<\/p>\n

CCHR International President Jan Eastgate says the system enabling this is indefensible: \u201cPsychiatric drug damage is excused because the person is labeled \u2018mentally disordered.\u2019 It\u2019s blaming the victim for the poison they were given.\u201d<\/p>\n

She continued: \u201cThe FDA has allowed drug makers and psychiatrists to argue\u2014with no scientific support\u2014that people \u2018need\u2019 drugs that can drive them to suicide, violence, and irreversible neurological injury. It is one of the great medical hoaxes of our time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pharmaceutical companies spent more than $350 million lobbying Congress and federal regulators\u2014including the FDA\u2014in 2022 alone, according to OpenSecrets. Former New England Journal of Medicine<\/em> editor Dr. Marcia Angell warned, \u201cWhen the FDA is dependent on industry fees, it creates a dangerous incentive to prioritize profit over public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

With no meaningful effort to curb harmful psychiatric prescribing, drug companies increasingly view populations dependent on or harmed by psychiatric drugs as an expanding revenue base.<\/p>\n

Long-term antidepressant use can cause physical dependence and severe withdrawal, all facts that manufacturers moved to obscure. At a 1996 closed-door, drug-industry-funded conference, SSRI antidepressant withdrawal was deliberately renamed \u201cantidepressant discontinuation syndrome\u201d to avoid linking these reactions to addiction.[1]<\/p>\n

In CCHR\u2019s documentary, psychologist Gretchen Watson explains: \u201cThese drugs are powerful and our brains and entire bodies adapt to them. And often people experience very serious psychiatric symptoms when they\u2019re withdrawing.\u201d These include dizziness, insomnia, impaired concentration, fatigue, headache, tremor, nightmares, depressed mood, irritability, anxiety, and panic attacks.<\/p>\n

Psychiatrist Samuel Lee concludes: \u201cJust the fact that the body\u2019s withdrawing from the SSRIs, if too abruptly taken away, proves that actually there is a physiologic and mental addiction to the SSRIs.\u201d Mental health defense attorney Kendra Parris adds that calling it \u201cdiscontinuation syndrome\u201d is \u201csophistry\u2014it\u2019s word-play.\u201d It is withdrawal by another name.<\/p>\n

Often, the fact that patients worsen from taking these drugs is blamed on the patient being \u201ctreatment-resistant.\u201d Psychiatrist Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring explains that so-called \u201ctreatment resistance\u201d often reflects iatrogenic injury: harm directly caused by psychiatric drugs. Antidepressants and other psychotropics can generate the very symptoms later mislabeled as \u201cpersistent illness.\u201d These are drug-induced conditions, not underlying disorders, he says. \u201cPsychiatric drugs can cause brain damage. Those harmed by withdrawal syndromes\u2014also called protracted withdrawal\u2014sustain neurological injury that does not resolve even when the drug is reinstated. This is a defining feature of brain damage: reinstating the substance does not reverse the harm.\u201d[2]<\/p>\n

Tardive dyskinesia (TD), disfiguring involuntary movements of the face, limbs, and torso, occurs in 20%\u201350% of antipsychotic users and can also be triggered by antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and stimulants.[3] It is mislabeled as a \u201cneurological disorder\u201d found in the American Psychiatric Association\u2019s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), <\/em>transforming it into a billable diagnosis.[4]<\/p>\n

The TD drug \u201ctreatments\u201d cause many of the same symptoms as antipsychotics, including restlessness, drooling, irregular heartbeat, trembling and shaking of the fingers or hands. Some were approved with the admission that \u201c<\/strong>the mechanism of action is unclear.\u201d[5]<\/p>\n

In 2020, nearly 77 million Americans<\/a> were on psychiatric drugs; over 11.1 million were on antipsychotics, including 829,372 children aged 0\u201317. That means 2.2\u20135.6 million Americans may already be permanently affected by TD from antipsychotics alone.[6]<\/p>\n

Instead of halting the cause, the psychiatric-pharmaceutical system has created a second revenue stream: drugs to treat the drug-induced disorder\u2014approved by the FDA. The global market for TD-treatment drugs exceeded $14 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $23 billion by 2033.[7]<\/p>\n

Eastgate states: \u201cThis is a closed loop of harm and profit. First, the drugs cause neurological damage; then new drugs are sold to \u2018treat\u2019 the damage\u2014and both are marketed as medical progress.\u201d She adds: \u201cThere is zero accountability for this abuse, especially for those forced to take psychotropic drugs under involuntary commitment and community treatment laws. They cannot refuse the drugs, and they cannot prevent the known damage the drugs will cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

CCHR<\/a>, which was established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and professor of psychiatry, Dr. Thomas Szasz, says DSM, the FDA\u2019s permissive drug approvals, and the aggressive marketing alliances between psychiatry and pharmaceutical companies have created a system where drug-induced harm is renamed as \u201cillness,\u201d monetized, and buried under diagnostic expansion. It requires a full investigation and urges watching Prescription for Violence: Psychiatry\u2019s Deadly Side Effects<\/em><\/a> for additional information.<\/p>\n

To learn more, visit: <\/strong>https:\/\/www.cchrint.org\/2025\/12\/19\/psychiatric-drug-damage-ignored-for-decades\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Sources:<\/em><\/p>\n

[1] Joseph Glenmullen, M.D., Prozac Backlash<\/em>, (Simon & Schuster, NY, 2000), p. 76.<\/p>\n

[2] Dr Josef Witt-Doerring, \u201cThe Ethics of Long-Term Psychiatric Drug Use and Why We Need a Better Way,\u201d MAD, 27 Feb 2025, https:\/\/www.madinamerica.com\/2025\/02\/ethics-psychiatric-drug-use\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[3] Elyse M. Cornett, PhD, \u201cMedication-Induced Tardive Dyskinesia: A Review and Update,\u201d The Ochsner Journal<\/em>, Summer 2017, https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC5472076\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[4] https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC5472076\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[5] https:\/\/www.managedcaremag.com\/archives\/2018\/1\/two-new-drugs-tardive-dyskinesia-hit-market<\/a><\/p>\n

[6] https:\/\/www.cchrint.org\/psychiatric-drugs\/people-taking-psychiatric-drugs\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[7] https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/tardive-dyskinesia-td-treatment-drugs-4oogc<\/a><\/p>\n

MULTIMEDIA<\/strong><\/p>\n

Image link for media: https:\/\/www.Send2Press.com\/300dpi\/25-1222-s2p-cchrdecades-300dpi.webp<\/a><\/p>\n

Image caption: CCHR exposes oversight failures that enabled decades of addiction and neurological injury from psychiatric drugs. Its new documentary reveals how industry influence and diagnostic labels conceal widespread harm and escalating public health risks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES, Calif., Dec. 22, 2025 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR) is raising alarms over the widespread, little-known fact that many psychiatric drugs are addictive, disfiguring, and capable of producing catastrophic neurological damage. This is harm that the group says now warrants a federal investigation into how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has allowed such risks to proliferate for decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9788,"featured_media":131925,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[608,12804,10,187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-religion-news","category-ap","category-california-news","category-los-angeles-news","has-post-title","has-post-date","no-post-category","no-post-tag","no-post-comment","has-post-author"],"acf":[],"views":1651,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131927"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131931,"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131927\/revisions\/131931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}