A Traveling Exhibit on Santa Monica’s 3rd Street Promenade shines the cold, hard light of truth on psychiatry

It is called Psychiatry: An Industry of Death, an appropriate name for an exhibit whose displays and video presentations chart the history of psychiatric brutality from its earliest beginnings to the present.

The three sections most popular with visitors covered psychiatric eugenics and racism; artists whose lives or careers were destroyed or cut short by psychiatry; psychiatric drugging of children and the resultant spike in school shootings; and ECT (electroconvulsive treatment), where victims are subjected to as much as 460 volts of electricity to the brain—six times what is needed to cause a convulsion, according to Dr. Kenneth Castleman, a biomedical engineer who has served on the faculty at Caltech and the University of Texas and on the research staff of USC and UCLA.

As is often the case wherever this exhibit is displayed, many Santa Monica visitors had their own stories of psychiatric brutality. A wheelchair-bound elderly woman was distraught when her husband died. Still mourning, she was advised to take Xanax for her grief and when she refused she was institutionalized for 72 hours and forcibly administered drugs.

On completing a tour of the exhibit, a psych major, who chose the field because she wanted to help people, said she is opposed to the use of psychiatric drugs. She left with the realization that she had to rethink what she wants to do with her life.

One young man was raised in the foster care system, where he was labeled as an “ADHD kid.” Fortunately, he was placed with a foster father who sided with him and refused to administer highly addictive Ritalin, a schedule II drug that, according to the FDA, has “a high potential for abuse and produces many of the same effects as cocaine or the amphetamines.”

One visitor shared the story of the tragic suicide of her boyfriend—she observed his rapid deterioration when he began taking psychiatric drugs. Another visitor, once a soloist with a top band, dates the loss of his career and his descent into homelessness to his getting into psych hands.

The exhibit is built around the feature-length Psychiatry: An Industry of Death documentary, featuring rare historical and contemporary footage and interviews with more than 160 doctors, attorneys, educators, survivors and experts on the mental health industry and its abuses.

CCHR was co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and professor of psychiatry Dr. Thomas Szasz.

Alerted to the brutality of psychiatric treatment by author and humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard who wrote extensively about the abuses of psychiatric patients, CCHR today stands as a powerful voice of reason for those abused and continues its advocacy for reforms. For more information visit the CCHR website.