CCHR Challenges Mental Health Awareness Week Over Forced Treatment

As Mental Health Awareness Week (October 4–10) approaches, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR) is challenging the mental health establishment to confront the reality of involuntary detention and forced treatment. The group, founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, released an updated Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights and is urging individuals to sign its Psychiatric Living Will, an advance directive to be filed with an attorney. CCHR President Jan Eastgate emphasized that awareness should be measured by whether forced detention and treatment are being dismantled, and whether the public is informed of the risks.

The declaration asserts the right not to be held in a psychiatric facility against one's will and to refuse psychiatric drugs, electroshock, psychosurgery, and other interventions. CCHR cites alarming statistics: an estimated 1.2 million Americans are involuntarily hospitalized annually; a July 2025 Federal Reserve Bank of New York study found those involuntarily detained were nearly twice as likely to die by suicide or overdose within three months of release; and a 2017 JAMA Psychiatry meta-analysis reported suicide risk in the first three months after psychiatric discharge was 100 times the global rate. A 2023 Congressional Research Service report warned that involuntary commitment can implicate Fourteenth Amendment due process rights. Vulnerable populations, including children and the elderly, are affected: Medicare data show 20,436 beneficiaries received electroshock in 2018, and state reports from California, Illinois, and Vermont found 30.3% of patients receiving ECT were 65 or older. CCHR's Psychiatric Living Will is designed as a refusal of psychiatric evaluation, detention, and treatment, and instructs that the document be filed if anyone petitions a court for such measures. Under the Patient Self-Determination Act of 1990, Medicare- and Medicaid-participating facilities must inform patients of their right to an advance directive. However, validity varies by state, and about half of states have specific psychiatric advance-directive statutes. The group also points to Hargrave v. Vermont, where a federal appeals court rejected a state scheme that stripped involuntarily committed patients of advance-directive protections, and notes that forced interventions conflict with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and World Health Organization guidance. CCHR calls for the abolition of coercive practices and urges every adult to sign and file a Psychiatric Living Will.