Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights)

PsychRights is mostly inactive at this time pending funding. See, Getting to the Next Level.

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights) is a non-profit, tax exempt 501(c)(3) public interest law firm whose mission is to mount a strategic litigation campaign against forced psychiatric drugging and electroshock in the United States akin to what Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP mounted in the 40's and 50's on behalf of African American civil rights. The public mental health system is creating a huge class of chronic mental patients through forcing them to take ineffective, yet extremely harmful drugs. As part of its mission, PsychRights is further dedicated to exposing the truth about these drugs and the courts being misled into ordering people to be drugged and subjected to other brain and body damaging interventions against their will. Due to the pervasive psychiatric drugging of children and youth, PsychRights has made attacking this problem a priority. Children are virtually always forced to take these drugs because it is the adults in their lives who are making the decision.

Schizophrenia Drugs Reduce Recovery Rates from 80% to 5%

Role of Litigation in a Strategic Approach
to Mental Health System Change

The Psychiatric Drugging of Children & Elderly

Law, Alternatives & Change at
MadInAmerica.com

Recent News/Highlighted Items

Reviews of The Zyprexa Papers:

PsychRights' Medicaid Fraud Initiative Against Psychiatric Drugging of Children & Youth

Model Complaint

Medically Accepted Indications Chart

Forced Drugging Defense Package (Updated to include Affidavit of Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD)

Microsoft Word version of pleadings

The "clickable" Whitaker Affidavit

Dr. Grace E. Jackson Affidavit, including brain damage

PsychRights Channel on YouTube

Meta-analysis of the strength of exploratory suicide prediction models; from clinicians to computers, by Corke, M., Mullin, K., Angel-Scott, H., Xia, S., & Large, M. (2021). BJPsych Open, 7(1), e26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2020.162. The positive predictive value was 2.8%, meaning that there was a 2.8% chance that the test was correct for every person who screened positive. More than 93% of the people who screened positive for suicide risk were actually at low risk for suicide. See, Mental Health Professionals and AI Tools Fail to Predict Suicide, on Mad in America.Prohibition of Involuntary Hospitalization and Involuntary Treatment: Countering Misapprehensions-- A briefing paper addressed to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and other stakeholders, by Tina Minkowitz, July 13, 2020.

MindFreedom International Organizing Guide for Psychiatric Survivors.

Systematic violations of patients’ rights and safety: Forced medication of a cohort of 30 patients, by Peter C Gøtzsche and Anders Sørensen, Indian Journal of Medical Ethics Online First Published August 12, 2020.

Survivors’ Panel marks a milestone at 2019 International Congress on Law and Mental Health, Leah M. Ashe, PhD, August 5, 2019.

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 2018 Review Submission by Center for Human Rights of Survivors and Users of Psychiatry (CHRUSP) and the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights)

Treatment Planning and Medication Monitoring Were Lacking for Children in Foster Care Receiving Psychotropic Medication, by the Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, September 17, 2018.

Disability Rights Maine Complaints Lead to First Steps In Stopping the Criminalization of Mental Illness In the Lewiston-Auburn Area, August 30, 2018.

Patterns of Early Mental Health Diagnosis and Medication Treatment in a Medicaid-Insured Birth Cohort, by Dinci Pennap, MPH; Julie M. Zito, PhD; Paramala J. Santosh, MD, PhD; Sarah E. Tom, PhD; Eberechukwu Onukwugha, PhD; Laurence S. Magder, PhD, JAMA Pediatrics, doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2018.0240.

Video: Schizophrenia Drugs Reduce Recovery Rates from 80% to 5%, October 7, 2016.

The Case Against Antipsychotics: A Review of Their Long-term Effects, by Robert Whitaker, Mad In America Foundation, July, 2016.

Precursors to suicidality and violence on antidepressants: systematic review of trials in adult healthy volunteers, by Andreas Ø Bielefeldt, Pia B Danborg, and Peter C Gøtzsche, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine; 2016, Vol. 109(10) 381–392.

PsychRights' Open Letter to Senator Lisa Murkowski (R Alaska), January 21, 2013.

PsychRights' Letter to the President's Task Force on Gun Violence, January 7, 2013.

Unsealed or Otherwise Formerly Confidential Documents

Forced Drugging of Bill Bigley

One Drug, Two Faces, New York Times, March 25, 2008.

The Zyprexa Papers Scandal

Involuntary Commitment and Forced Psychiatric Drugging in the Trial Courts: Rights Violations as a Matter of Course, by James B. (Jim) Gottstein, 25 Alaska L. Rev. 51 (2008).

How the Legal System Can Help Create a Recovery Culture in Mental Health Systems, presented at Alternatives 2005: Leading the Transformation to Recovery, Phoenix, Arizona, October 28, 2005.

Report on Multi-Faceted Grass-Roots Efforts To Bring About Meaningful Change To Alaska's Mental Health Program

Bigley v. Alaska Psychiatric Institute, S-13116, Alaska Supreme Court Opinion No. 6374, May 22, 2009.

Wetherhorn v. Alaska Psychiatric Institute, Opinion No. 6091, ruling Alaska's gravely disabled criteria unconstitutional (requiring the state prove the person unable to survive safely in freedom).

Myers v. Alaska Psychiatric Institute, Opinion No. 6021, June 30, 2006, ruling Alaska's forced psychiatric drugging regime unconstitutional.

MindFreedom Shield Program

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