LOS ANGELES - TelAve -- By CCHR International

Psychiatry's system of involuntary commitment is recycling discredited eugenics-era policies—using vague labels and coercive "treatments" that violate human rights, while expanding its powers to institutionalize people under the guise of restoring public order. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR) warns that the United States is sliding back into a dark chapter of history: eugenics cloaked as psychiatric "care." Federal and state initiatives to expand involuntary psychiatric commitment and forced treatment mirror discredited practices once used to sterilize, segregate, and even eliminate people deemed "unfit." CCHR cautions that the solutions being advanced echo the pseudoscience of eugenics, not medicine or human rights.

A recent federal initiative urges states to funnel homeless individuals and drug abusers into psychiatric institutions as "the most proven way to restore public order." Yet a 2022 Harvard School of Public Health study documented that psychiatric hospitals abuse the incarcerated, using forced electroshock, chemical restraints, and prolonged mechanical restraint—practices violating the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT), which the U.S. has ratified.[1]

Across America, 1.2 million people are involuntarily hospitalized every year, about every minute.[2] According to government data, 82% of child and adolescent residential psychiatric facilities use seclusion and restraint.[3] Courts rely on vague standards like "danger to self or others" or "unsound mind"—terms with no scientific definition.

Once detained, individuals may face:

• Forced drugging with powerful antipsychotics that can be permanently damaging, requiring additional psychotropic drugs.
• Electroshock therapy (ECT) against their wishes.
• Physical and chemical restraints that international treaties recognize as potential torture.

A Eugenics Legacy That Never Ended

Far from a new policy, today's involuntary commitment system directly descends from the eugenics movement, which legitimized views of "inferiority" by lending them pseudo-scientific support.

• Buck v. Bell (1927): The U.S. Supreme Court upheld compulsory sterilization of those labeled "feebleminded." This ruling has never been overturned.[4]
• Psychiatric categories: Terms such as "idiot," "imbecile," and "moron" once justified segregation and sterilization. In the early 1900s, eugenics "defects" were what U.S. psychiatrists later rebranded as attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Psychiatrists promoted the notion that "imbeciles" and people with mental challenges were an undue hardship on society, leading to the murder of "undesirables" in Nazi Germany. Today, psychiatrists continue to advance unproven assertions that "mental illness" is hereditary.
• Lobotomies & shock treatments: From the 1930s onward, invasive and violent "treatments" were performed on tens of thousands in U.S. hospitals.

Jan Eastgate, President of CCHR International, says, "Eugenics framed institutionalization as 'humane' while serving social order. Today's rhetoric of restoring 'public safety' by removing the homeless, drug users, or the mentally disabled into psychiatric custody is indistinguishable from that of the past."

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International Context: Europe Repeats the Same Mistake

Europe is now debating an Additional Protocol to the Oviedo Convention, the Council of Europe's treaty on human rights in biomedicine, which entrenches involuntary commitment and forced treatment—the very practices international human rights law rejects.

An estimated 38% of those involuntarily admitted to institutions in Europe face coercive measures—forced drugging, seclusion, or restraints—within four weeks.[5] Such practices have caused trauma, lasting injury, and even death.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), binding international law, takes the opposite position:

• No one can be deprived of liberty because of a disability, including psychosocial disability.
• Involuntary psychiatric treatment violates Articles 14 (liberty) and 15 (freedom from torture).[6]

The CRPD Committee, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and disability rights groups across Europe have condemned the Protocol as a dangerous regression into eugenics-era thinking.

The World Health Organization has documented systemic human rights violations across psychiatric institutions, underscoring that coercive psychiatry causes trauma, injury, and death.

Why This Matters for America Now

The U.S. is at a crossroads:

• Homelessness policies increasingly and falsely equate psychiatric detention with compassion.
• Drug use crises are being exploited to justify forced institutionalization and haven't worked.
• Judicial authority is being expanded to allow indefinite confinement based on unproven psychiatric diagnoses.

Eastgate explains: "Psychiatry itself admits it cannot cure any mental disorder. Under such conditions, involuntary commitment is not medicine—it is arbitrary detention under a medical pretext and psychiatric torture."

CCHR urges policy makers, legal professionals, and human rights advocates to:

• Reject expansion of involuntary commitment laws.
• Investigate existing abuses in psychiatric hospitals, including forced drugging and electroshock.
• Ban electroshock treatment.
• Support international human rights standards prohibiting psychiatric detention based on disability.
• Demand withdrawal of Europe's Additional Protocol to the Oviedo Convention.

Involuntary psychiatric commitment today is not a form of care—it is the continuation of eugenics under new terminology. From Buck v. Bell in the U.S. to the Oviedo Protocol in Europe, the same rationale persists: protecting "public order" by empowering psychiatrists to strip individuals of liberty and dignity.

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America now has a chance to reject this failed model and instead lead in advancing non-coercive, rights-based approaches to mental health.

CCHR warns: Expanded psychiatric commitment powers—whether in the U.S. or Europe—must end.

About CCHR: A non-profit mental health watchdog, established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz; instrumental in obtaining hundreds of laws against coercive psychiatric while advocating for human rights and dignity in the mental health field.

Sources:

[1] Matthew S. Smith & Michael Ashley Stein, "WHEN DOES MENTAL HEALTH COERCION CONSTITUTE TORTURE?: IMPLICATIONS OF UNPUBLISHED U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGE DECISIONS DENYING NON-REFOULEMENT PROTECTION," FORDHAM INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL, Vol 45:5, 2022, ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj/vol45/iss5/2/

[2] Natalia Emanuel, et al., "A Danger to Self and Others: Health and Criminal Consequences of Involuntary Hospitalization," Federal Reserve Bank of New York, staff reports, July 2025, www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr1158.pdf?sc_lang=en

[3] Sharon Green-Hennessy et. al., "Predictors of Seclusion or Restraint Use Within Residential Treatment Centers for Children and Adolescents," Psychiatric Quarterly, Dec. 2015, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25733324/

[4] Laura I Appleman, "Deviancy, Dependency, and Disability: The Forgotten History of Eugencics and Mass Incarceration," Duke Law Journal, Dec. 2018

[5] Dainius Puras, M.D., et al., "Reducing coercion in mental healthcare," Epidemiol Psychiatr Sci, 9 July 2019, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7032511/

[6] www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-persons-disabilities