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SPEARHEADING SOCIAL REFORM
And these were by no means isolated abuses. Elsewhere in Europe, conditions have been much the same.
In France, which has the fourth largest per capita psychiatric presence in the world, there is likewise no lack of work for CCHR. There, hundreds of French citizens are subjected to psychiatric electroshock “treatments” every year. This barbaric practice passes up to 460 volts of searing current through a victim’s head, causing bone-breaking convulsions and severe brain damage. As a result, CCHR has been inundated with tragic stories from people whose lives have been ruined by this so-called treatment.
CCHR has investigated numerous such cases and taken action to stop abuses by filing complaints with government agencies and acting as a civil party in suits to assist those in psychiatric institutions who had been force-fed, humiliated, beaten, drugged and even raped.
CCHR has also vigorously campaigned against involuntary commitment laws which allow individuals to be incarcerated without their consent. In 1989, it discovered that the Ministry of Justice had refused to release a report on the appalling conditions in France’s psychiatric facilities and attempted to use various government channels to force the report into the open.
 
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