Mental Health Watchdog exposes psychiatric abuse of veterans at event held to honor those brave men and women who were injured during their service and the families of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.
In a ceremony attended by over 350 military and civilian guests, the Florida chapter of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights(CCHR) hosted its 3rd Annual Purple Heart Day Banquet in the historic Fort Harrison. This yearly event is held to honor those who have been wounded or killed in battle, and to expose the destructive psychiatric drugging of U.S. veterans.
Acting as Mistress of Ceremonies, the Executive Director of CCHR Florida opened the event by reviewing the 225-year history of the Purple Heart and introducing the Military Tribute. Horn players performed “Fanfare for the Common Man” as the U.S. Marine Corps Color Guard presented the colors with full ceremony. Next the Pledge of Allegiance and National Anthem were followed by a U.S. Marine Corps bugler playing “Taps”. Father Bob Swick of the Tampa Bay Veterans Alliance then led the attendees in prayer.
The keynote speaker was Purple Heart recipient Lance Corporal Mike DeLancy. Corporal DeLancy spoke vividly of being seriously wounded in combat in Iraq. He described the new life purpose he discovered in founding the nonprofit Wounded Warriors Abilities Ranch, operating a 10-acre ranch in Pinellas to help veterans get and stay active. “In my experience, getting out of the house and active in your community works better than any pill could,” he said.
Next, Mr. Adolfo Valero, a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Army Special Forces, spoke of how he entered law school after retirement, to help veterans fight for their rights, as an attorney. “You don’t get happy soldiers and veterans with a system that only offers psychotropic drugs or electric shock therapy as treatment for the pressures and stresses we endure”, he said. He cited statistics correlating the suicide rate of veterans and the use of psychiatric drugs on soldiers. “As an officer, I had the responsibility and challenge of ensuring that my men come home safe,” he said. “So when I hear about the number of veterans or soldiers committing suicide every day, these are statistics that I will not ignore.”
Mr. Valero closed by acknowledging CCHR as “the boots on the ground” who “go in and pull people out of harm’s way.”
The final quest speaker, Ms. Diane Stein, President of CCHR Florida, read a letter from one of the founders of CCHR, L. Ron Hubbard, written to the parents of a sailor under his command whose morale suffered due to lack of mail from home. ““Please write your boy often”, the letter closed. “He loves you or he would not worry about you so. Please send him the letters which are such a large factor in sustaining his morale in the face of the glorious task he must perform.”
Stein described how Mr. Hubbard worked with service personnel and veterans as early as 1940 to find effective, low cost and non-drug-based solutions to the problems he saw his men experiencing during service. “His goal was to remedy what we would call today Post-traumatic Stress Disorder”, she said.
Giving a brief overview of the history of CCHR, Ms. Stein described the co-founding of this mental health watchdog by the Church of Scientology and renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Thomas Szasz, a Lifetime Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association who had become critical of barbaric measures taken by psychiatry starting after the war. He wrote over 35 books on the subject and joined CCHR as Founding Commissioner in 1969. Today, CCHR is the leading non-profit, non-religious, non-political mental health watchdog on this planet with more than 250 chapters across 34 countries.
Ms. Stein noted that officially, one in six American service members are on one or more psychiatric drugs and that in ten years, the U.S. government has spent over $4.5 billion on these drugs for soldiers and veterans. The labeled side effects for these psychiatric drugs include mania, psychosis, violence, suicidal ideation, and increased aggression, as well as lasting damage on the body’s nervous system.
“CCHR has worked for almost 50 years for full informed consent in the field of mental health”, she said. “It is in this spirit that CCHR Florida pledges to continue working with everyone here tonight to do what we can to protect and improve lives while eradicating abuses in the mental health industry.”
CCHR Florida has scheduled a follow-up seminar entitled PTSD: The Hidden Enemy at their center at 109 N. Fort Harrison Ave, Clearwater. An experienced Army veteran will address questions of PTSD, what it is and how it should be treated. To learn more, please call 727-442-8820 or visit www.cchrflorida.org.
About CCHR: Initially established by the Church of Scientology and renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz in 1969, CCHR’s mission is to eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections. L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, first brought psychiatric imprisonment to wide public notice: “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,’” he wrote in March 1969.
