Law Project for Psychiatric Rights: PsychRights  


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The Zyprexa Papers   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. 

 PsychRights' strategic litigation is currently inactive pending funding.  See, Getting to the Next Level.  However, PsychRights' public education efforts continue, particularly through Nancy Rubenstein who has been doing outreach since 2010.
Report on Improving Mental Health Outcomes 
 
 
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



Recent News/Highlighted Items

  • Report on Improving Mental Health Outcomes, by James B. (Jim) Gottstein, Esq.; Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD; David Cohen, PhD; Chuck Ruby, PhD; Faith Myers, September, 2023.
  • Himes v. Somatics, California Supreme Court Opinion holding Electroshock machine manufacturers may still be held liable for failing to warn even if it wouldn't have changed the prescriber's recommendation, June 20, 2024.
  • Psychiatry stripped naked: Current human rights violations in psychiatry in Germany, Greece and the rest of the world, by Peter Lehmann, Journal of Critical Psychology,Counselling and Psychotherapy, Vol. 24, No. 1, 16-37 (2024).
  • Evidence on Involuntary Behavioral Health Treatment, April, 2024.
  • New Federal Guidance for Alternatives to Police for People with Behavioral Health or Other Disabilities, by Judge Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law and Vera Institute Justice, January 14, 2025.
  • When There’s a Crisis, Call a Peer: How People with Lived Experience Make Mental Health Crisis Services More Effective, Judge Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, January 3, 2024.
  • Mental Health, Human Rights and Legislation: Guidance and Practice, World Health Organization and United Nations, October, 2023.
  • 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 
  • Microsoft Word version of pleadings
  • The "clickable" Whitaker Affidavit
  • Dr. Grace E. Jackson Affidavit, including brain damage
  • PsychRights Channel on YouTube
  • White Paper on Improving Patient Outcomes, Addressing Treatment Caused Trauma & Injuries, Enhancing Patient Rights and Grievance Procedures for the Report Required by § 36 of CH 41 SLA 2022 (HB172), April, 2023.
  • Mental Health, Human Rights and Legislation: Guidance and Practice, World Health Organization and United Nations, October, 2023
  • How the FDA approved an antipsychotic that failed to show a meaningful benefit but raised the risk of death, by Robert Whitaker, August 17, 2023, BMJ 2023;382:p1801 | doi: 10.1136/bmj.p1801.
  • Neuroleptics do much more harm than good and should not be used, by Peter C Gøtzsche, Professor and Director Institute for Scientific Freedom, Copenhagen, Denmark, chapter 4 in Psychological Interventions for Psychosis: Towards a Paradigm Shift, edited by Juan Antonio Díaz-Garrido, Raquel Zúñiga, Horus Lafitte and Eric Morris,Springer, 2003.
  • OPINION: The rights of Alaskans with mental illness are being violated – by the state, the courts and their own attorneys, Val Van Brocklin, Anchorage Daily News, April 3, 2023.
  • The Fight for Pharma Accountability and Psychiatric Rights: Jim Gottstein, Esq., A lawyer weighs in on pharmaceutical corruption and involuntary psychiatric care, Conversations in Critical Psychiatry, by Awais, Aftab, MD, Psychiatric Times, August 2, 2022.
  • Involuntary Commitment as “Carceral Health Service”: From Healthcare to-Prison Pipeline to a Public Health Abolition Praxis, by Rafik Wahbi and Leo Beletsky, The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 50 (2022): 23-30
  • The Soteria model: implementing an alternative to acute psychiatric hospitalization in Israel, by Avraham Friedlandera, Dana Tzur Bitana, and Pesach Lichtenberg, Psychosis, Psychological, Scial and Integrtive Approaches, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group (2022).
  • Video: Soteria Past, Present, and Future: The Evidence For This Model of Care, by Robert Whitaker, July 16, 2021.
  • Relief for Acute Psychotic Experiences: Stabilizing Homes - The Soteria Model, National Associatioin on Mental Illness Washington 2021 State Conference October 16 2021.
  • From Iatrogenic Harm to Iatrogenic Violence: Corruption and the End of Medicine, by Leah M. Ashe, PhD., Anthropology & Medicine, 28:2, 255-275,(2021).  Leah died at the age of 40, seven months after she submitted this paper and six months before it was published.  The first 3 pages of the paper are very academic and Leah's horror story starts on page 4 (258) under "The Case."  Her medical mistreatment as described in her last paper almost certainly caused her death in the sense of  but for it she would not have died when she did.
  • Guidance on Community Mental Health Services, World Health Organization, 2021.
  • Letter to United States Senators Wyden and Crapo regarding their Unmet Mental Health Needs Request for Information, November 1, 2021.
  • What Happened to Britney Spears can Happen to You, by Jim Gottstein, RxISK, August 2, 2021.
  • A conversation on Britney Spears, conservatorship, and psychiatric power, Laura Delano, David Cohen, PhD, & Jim Gottstein, June 28, 2021.
  • 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).
  • 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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