The Citizens Commission on Human Rights applauds debut of a new documentary highlighting one man’s fight against the multi-billion dollar psychiatric industry.
TheCitizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a non-profit mental health watchdog dedicated to the protection of children, applauds the debut of a new documentary highlighting one man’s fight against the multi-billion dollar psychiatric industry.
In a new documentary in “The Voices for Humanity” series on the Scientology TV network, human rights advocate Rev. Frederick Shaw, Jr. takes on the multi-billion dollar psychiatric interests in drugging and electroshocking children, especially in his African American community. As the international spokesperson for the international headquarters of CCHR and a Vice President of the Inglewood-South Bay branch of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), Rev. Shaw championed the national NAACP’s unanimous passage of two resolutions opposing electroshock treatment and psychotropic drugging of children.
“Psychiatry has never been a friend of African Americans,” Shaw states. And today, he adds, that enmity is shown in the alarming rate of African American children placed in foster care or in the juvenile justice system where they are labeled with a mental disorder as a pretext to be given psychotropic drugs.
Shaw is a powerful voice steeped in firsthand experience: A native of Compton, California, and a former Los Angeles County Sheriff Deputy he co-founded an organization contracted to serve at-risk youth from ages 12-18 years old. He found there was an over representation of African American children in foster care and the juvenile justice system. Here they were targets for mind-altering drugs, which he refused to give adolescents in his care. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors awarded him for his work with foster care children and youth on probation. [1]
Through his work with CCHR, he also became aware that electroshock treatment—the psychiatric practice of sending up to 460 volts of electricity through the brain to treat depressed moods, while knowing that this cannot cure—spurred him to lead a nationwide campaign to raise awareness of the brain-damaging effects of the treatment and call for an end to the abuse. Last year, as a Vice President of the Inglewood-South Bay branch of the NAACP, Shaw helped obtain a national NAACP resolution supporting a ban on ECT for children, adolescents and young adults.
He also helped achieve a similar resolution to protect foster care and other children from psychotropic drugs. As Shaw points out, African-American children are placed in foster care at twice the rate of white children and are more likely to remain in foster care longer and less likely to be returned home. By the time they reach the age of 18, 53 percent of black children in the U.S. experience a child protective services investigation compared to 37 percent of children in general. [2,3]
The unanimously passed national NAACP resolution calls for legislative protections for foster children, stating: “Foster children are being given cocktails of powerful psychotropic drugs and federal inspectors found more than half the children nationwide are poorly monitored.” According to studies and drug regulatory agency warnings, these drugs have adverse effects, including stroke, pancreatitis, obesity, and diabetes. A variety of drugs targeted towards the central nervous system are associated with cardiac side effects, including arrhythmia and sudden death. [4,5,6]
• The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that up to 39 percent of foster care children are prescribed psychotropic drugs. [7]
• The Congressional Research Service also found the number of children in foster care on a psychiatric drug was more than four times the rate among children overall. [8]
• An analysis of national Medicaid claims for foster youth found 49 percent were taking antipsychotics and 48 percent were on antidepressants despite a "black box" warning — the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) most serious drug labeling — that antidepressants may increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in some children and adolescents. [9]
• Psychiatrists prescribe 93 percent of the drugs dispensed to foster care youths, according to study published in Pediatrics. [10]
“Today, African Americans are over-represented in foster care, the juvenile justice system, prison and the homeless, where they are candidates for psychiatric oppression—drugs—and other abuse,” Shaw states. “Therefore, I feel privileged that the Scientology Network chose my work for its Voice for Humanity series because it will further raise very necessary awareness about the abuses and racism that occurs in the mental health field to help put an end to these. It provides a voice to a wider community—those that may be silenced by drugs and electroshock or who are being forced onto brain damaging ‘treatment’ simply because they are Black or a minority,” Shaw says.
Rev. Shaw regularly tours community leaders and groups through CCHR International’s “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death” museum that details the history of psychiatry’s abuses, including racism dating back to the “Father of American psychiatry,” Benjamin Rush, who declared in the late 1700s that African Americans were “diseased.”
“Reverend Shaw is an inspiration to us all,” stated Diane Stein president of the Florida chapter of CCHR. “His dedication and passion to fight for justice is unparalleled.” Ms. Stein is also featured on the Voices for Humanity series for her work in exposing unjust involuntary psychiatric examination of children and other mental health human rights abuses.
To learn more contact Amber Rauscher at [email protected] or (323) 467-4242.
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.
References:
[1] http://www.fredshawjr.com/fred-shaw-jr/
[2] https://youthtoday.org/2018/02/found-black-foster-parents-confronted-racial-disparity-foster-care/, citing https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/racial_disproportionality.pdf
[3] https://youthtoday.org/2018/02/found-black-foster-parents-confronted-racial-disparity-foster-care/, citing https://source.wustl.edu/2016/12/one-third-us-children-reported-investigated-child-abuse-neglect-age-18/
[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/business/28psych.html; http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303442704579361333470749104
[6]http://www.aafp.org/afp/2010/0301/p617.html; http://resources.childhealthcare.org/resources/Psychotropic_Meds__Arrhythmia_and_Sudden_Death.pdf
[8] Ibid.
[9] http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-children-psychotropic-meds-20150217-story.html; http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art351.asp
[10] Zito JM et al., “Psychotropic Medication Patterns Among Youth in Foster Care,” Pediatrics, Vol. 121, No. 1, Jan. 2008, pp. e157-e163
