Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Exhibit awakens Athens to the dark history of psychiatry and its dangerous incursion against the rights and dignity of the proud and compassionate people of Greece
Citizens Commission on Human Rights Greece brought the Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Exhibit to Athens in September 2024. The exhibit exposed the truth about psychiatry, the dangers of so-called psychiatric treatments, the harmful medications they promote, and the threat to the human rights of those trapped in the system. The passage of a new mental health bill increased the urgency of educating the people of Greece to protect them from abuse.
The exhibit opened September 13
at
the stately Zappeion
Megaron
in the heart of Athens, where a constant stream of visitors was shocked to learn about the dark history and crimes of psychiatry, and the urgency of bringing psychiatrists and their practices under the law.
The Athens CCHR president introduced those attending the exhibit’s grand opening to psychiatry’s sordid past, including the manipulation of those drafting the
Council
of Europe’s Convention on Human Rights to deny personal freedoms to those suffering from so-called mental disorders “for their own good.” CCHR has been at the vanguard of the fight against abuse—a positive movement that has been gaining ground in recent years, most notably with the United Nations and World Health Organization’s new guidelines calling for an end to coercion in the field of mental health.
Although unable to attend, a psychiatrist and professor at the School of Medicine of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki sent a speech to be read on his behalf, in which he stated, “Psychiatry as an institution does not come under the provisions or regulation of any law. It is a law unto itself. Psychiatry as a practice, with its so-called ‘treatment’ through involuntary confinement, physical torture, psycho-pharmacological poisoning, electroshock and psychosurgery is a radical and total denial of law. It institutionalizes
the breaking of every rule… The only possible conclusion from any
critical consideration of psychiatry is that there is not, and cannot be, some
vague and nebulous ‘misuse’ or ‘abuse’ of psychiatry that must be curbed. Because psychiatry is an abuse in itself.”
Visitors who toured the exhibit were shocked and outraged by what they learned. One stated, “The volume of fraud and abuses from psycho-pharmaceuticals and the psychs is enormous.”
“This is an important accusation, based on chronological facts that were unknown to most of us,” said another. “A very dramatic
image of what psychiatry has done to erase people,” was the conclusion another guest reached. A woman who had been administered drugs against her will stated, “I was raised believing I have no other choice, but you provided the answers, and I’m ready to start over.”
The work of Citizens Commission on Human Rights is inspired by visionary humanitarian and Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard, who urged Scientologists to expose and help abolish any and all physically damaging practices in the field of mental health, help clean up and keep clean the field of mental health, and bring about an atmosphere of safety and security in the field of mental health by eradicating its abuses and brutality.
For more information, visit the CCHR website, or watch brief documentaries on the work of CCHR volunteers in countries around the world and the film Psychiatry: An Industry of Death on the Scientology Network.
