MindFreedom is a human rights organization with members worldwide. If you care about freedom and human dignity in the face of forced psychiatry, you’ve come to the right place.

Welcome to the campaign for MindFreedom.

Unlike most other mental healthadvocacy organizations in the world, MindFreedom is financially independentfrom pharmaceutical companies, governments, religions, and mental healthsystems — we get our support from our members, people with first hand experience of what it’s like to be forced into the mental health system, their families and their allies. Because of this fact, MindFreedom is in a unique position to publicly blow the whistle on psychiatric human rights abuses.

MindFreedom has members all around the globe, its roots lie in the ‘Psychiatric Survivor Movement’, a growing worldwide civil and human rights movement that fights for freedom of choice in the area of society’s response to mental and emotional problems and distress.

If you’ve never heard of our movement click here to visit the Wikipedia outline of what the ‘Psychiatric Survivor Movement’ is…



Maybe you came to this site today because you’re currently being subjected to forced medication or forced electroshock and you’re looking for information and assistance to win back your basic human rights and dignity from a mental health system that is all too often violent, coercive, and downright abusive. Maybe you’re visiting this website because you work in the system and have become disillusioned with the coercion and force you’re asked to carry out against patients as part of your job, maybe you’re visiting because you’re considering training as a mental health nurse, social worker, or psychiatrist. Maybe you’re considering having your loved one committed against their will. No matter who you are or the reason you’ve arrived here at the MindFreedom site, you are certain to find illuminating and useful information here on all topics related to the mental health system and human rights.

What is forced psychiatry?

Forced psychiatry, also known as ‘involuntary psychiatry’, ‘psychiatric commitment’, ‘involuntary treatment’, ‘forced treatment’, ‘assisted treatment’, ‘court ordered treatment’, ‘sectioning’, ‘psychiatric hold’, is the forced imposition of psychiatric interventions upon an individual by the government, against the will of the person targeted. Forced psychiatry has a long and grisly history dating back a couple hundred years that most people are aware of, but today, in the modern era, this controversial government practice hides in the shadows. Behind the closed doors of psych wards, government mental health system workers carry out violent forced ‘treatments’ against the will of those that are undergoing mental and emotional crises. To add to the silence, the stigma of being labeled a ‘mental patient’ and the trauma from these horrific experiences at the hands of the system prevents more people speaking out and fighting for their rights. Many forced into psychiatry have died at the hands of the system. While forced psychiatry may be an issue society would rather keep hidden and not talk about, this doesn’t make this controversy any less real, as millions of people worldwide have had psychiatry forced on them. MindFreedom envisions a society where people no longer have to live in fear of psychiatry being forced on them, where human rights apply to all humans, not just those without psychiatric diagnoses.

Why is forced psychiatry so controversial?

Nobody denies that people can become very overwhelmed with life, and experience extreme states of mind or exhibit problematic thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Everybody at some point in their lives needs support, and anybody can undergo a crisis, or periods of overwhelm that would get labeled ‘madness’, or ‘psychosis’, or ‘mental illness’. Growing numbers of people who’ve experienced these states of mind first-hand, and growing numbers of innovative mental health professionals, are beginning to see that society’s response to these problems has been part of the problem, not part of the solution.

More and more people are coming to see the importance of freedom of choice not only in the solutions to mental or emotional problems, but the importance of individuals having the freedom to develop their own interpretation of their problems, even if that interpretation is at odds with the interpretation put forward by psychiatry. Any reasonable person will admit that labels of ‘mental illness’ are subjective, not objective, and that psychiatry, the dominant profession in this area, is an inexact science. Many would be aware also of the growing body of evidence that psychiatric drugs do cause damage to the brain and body when used long term, and do come with all sorts of risk/benefit trade-offs. Forced psychiatry is controversial because it imposes, by force, a choice made by others on the individual who is going through a crisis, this represents government forcing its interpretation of the person’s problems on them, and most brutally of all, forcibly altering that person’s body against their will. Forced psychiatry represents the ripping away of choice in what treatment a person may want, what interpretation of their problems they may have, and what solutions that person may seek to their problems.

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Forced psychiatry represents government making the assumption that drug-based psychiatry is the ‘only way’ to be responding to the disparate problems that get labeled ‘mental illness’. Forced psychiatry in a very real sense, hands the profession of psychiatry a state enforced monopoly on human emotional and mental overwhelm. But if we admit psychiatry is subjective, possesses no biological objective medical tests to prove its assertions that those it labels mentally ill have bona fide ‘brain diseases’, then it becomes orders of magnitude more controversial that government is granting this profession the power to enter your body by force, against your express wishes.

Even doctors who can prove genuine bodily diseases with objective science, like heart surgeons do, don’t have the power to forcibly meddle inside your body. Yet this profession of psychiatry has reserved the right to force itself into your brain, this is at odds with every modern human rights ethic, and must come to an end.

Forced psychiatry usually involves the targeted person losing their right to own their own body. This can be a life destroying experience, and is experienced by many survivors of it, as torture. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture agrees, and has as recently as 2013 called for the abolition of forced psychiatric interventions, as you’ll see in video below.

There can be no doubt, to reiterate, that people in mental distress and crisis can present challenges for those around them, but MindFreedom believes there is always a way to respond to our fellow human beings who are in crisis without ripping away their dignity and human rights. Sadly, across the world, mental health systems respond not with compassion and a range of choices and approaches and paradigms, but with a monopolized, psychiatric drug based paradigm, rooted in the theoretical ‘medical model’ of psychiatry

Millions of people around the world find mainstream psychiatry’s drugs, labels and interpretations of their problems compelling and even helpful, MindFreedom acknowledges this.

It can be difficult for people to understand why others would object to having a popular chosen creed of ‘mental help’ forced upon them. MindFreedom is not against voluntary psychiatry, if you’ve found a solution that you’ve found helpful in your life, then we are very happy to hear it. Allowing government to force psychiatric drugs on your neighbors, however, becomes a whole different controversy.

Stripping basic human rights from people labeled ‘mentally ill’ is nothing new, governments, societies and those who choose to work in psychiatric wards have been dehumanizing ‘involuntary patients’ for generations. In fact, hundreds of thousands of people with psychiatric labels and other disabilities were murdered in the Holocaust. For generations, forced sterilization programs existed in western countries targeting those labeled ‘mentally ill’, only being abolished as recently as the 1970s. But societies still haven’t got used to the idea of extending equality to those considered ‘mentally ill’. Around the world, laws are on the books in most states and provinces, that make it legal for psychiatrists and their staff to forcibly drug and forcibly electroshock people. Even a forced ‘diagnosis’ can change the course of a life. Reaching out for help from the mental health system often comes at the cost of your basic rights, and many live in constant fear of being assaulted by the coercive and violent procedures that are central to modern forced psychiatry.

It is MindFreedom’s position that nobody deserves to have their body assaulted by forced psychiatric drugging or forced electroshock. The drugs or ‘medications’ used in forced drugging are brain function disabling tranquilizer drugs, and although they go by the name ‘antipsychotics’, these drugs do not target or correct any biological abnormality that psychiatry can demonstrate or prove exists inside the ‘patient’. They also come with massive side effects. It is clear that for expediency, to control people, these drugs are being used as chemical restraints, not as bona fide medicines. This is deeply inhumane, and a gross violation of human rights and the Hippocratic Oath. It is MindFreedom’s position that chemical restraint, forced sedation, forced drugging, the coercive administration of psychiatric drugs, is a grossly invasive, cruel and unusual, decimation of the human right to bodily integrity. In all situations, in all cases, it is excessive force, excessively invasive, humiliating, and profoundly violent and traumatizing. It is our position that there is always a way to humanely deal with our fellow human beings no matter how distressed they may be.

People forced into psychiatry are overwhelmingly innocent people, very few are criminals, yet these law abiding people lose more human rights than even a convicted criminal loses in a super-max prison. Those targeted for forced psychiatry lose the right to own their own body. Forced psychiatry is often described by many survivors of it, as being experienced as a kind of biological rape. These practices are not ‘help’, they are human rights abuses. Forced psychiatry represents dehumanizing the most distressed and overwhelmed individuals in society, during their weakest moments of life. In mistaking violence for ‘help that people need’ we as a society have committed atrocities for too long against those who are at their weakest. Forced psychiatry often drives people to suicide, traumatizes people for life, and crushes their sense of humanity and dignity. There are better ways to help. And if you take the time to thoroughly explore the MindFreedom website you will learn about the growing movement that fosters innovative alternative approaches to these problems.

What does forced psychiatry look like? The video below shows a forced injection being carried out against a defenseless teenage girl who was in custody of the Canadian government. This is the brutal reality of forcing this brand of ‘help’ on people. Treating the bodies of detainees like toxic waste dumps, to be forcibly injected with drugs, with complete disregard for that person’s basic human right to bodily integrity. Viewer discretion is advised, extremely graphic:

Below in another video a recent protest for human rights in response to the annual drug-company-money-soaked conference by the psychiatric profession. In New York in 2014, members of MindFreedom and other allied survivors of the mental health system reminded the world that they will not give up the fight for equality in the face of the psychiatric profession’s ‘involuntary help’, violence and dehumanization.