LOS ANGELES: With 36 million Americans being prescribed antidepressant drugs that are under investigation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for causing suicidal ideation and worsening depression, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) charges the American Psychiatric Association (APA) with falsely promoting an unproven "chemical imbalance" theory in order to support a $14 billion a year psychiatric drug industry.

For years the APA has stated that mental difficulties are brain based or the result of an "imbalance" of brain chemistry, yet APA president Steven Sharfstein finally admitted in June 2005, "We do not have a clean-cut lab test" to confirm this theory. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Mark Graff, Chair of APA Public Affairs admitted on CBS news that the term "chemical imbalance" is "probably drug company derived," and that there are "no blood tests" to determine such an imbalance exists.

As these admissions directly refute the APA's own promotional materials and website, CCHR wrote to Dr. Darrel Regier, Director of Research for the APA, asking the APA to provide a list all scientific and medical studies used by the APA to substantiate its claims that:

While the APA purports to be part of a "transparent" scientific community, CCHR has yet to receive the scientific studies supporting these claims - despite the APA acknowledging they had received the request. However, CCHR wants the APA to disclose their studies so that this can be made publicly available and people can be accurately informed.

Bruce Wiseman, US President of CCHR says, "The APA is stalling because there have never been any medical tests that can scientifically validate mental disorders as brain-based or the result of chemicals in the brain being 'imbalanced.' The APA must be held accountable. They should not be permitted to use junk science to obtain billions of dollars in government funding or to mislead the public into believing they need psychiatric drugs to cure an imbalance that does not exist."

Elliot Valenstein, Ph.D., author of Blaming the Brain, reveals that the promotion of the "chemical imbalance" theory has one purpose: "The theories are held on to not only because there is nothing else to take their place, but also because they are useful in promoting drug treatment."

Chicago psychiatrist David Kaiser states, "...modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic cause of any single mental illness...Patients [have] been diagnosed with 'chemical imbalances' despite the fact that no test exists to support such a claim, and...there is no real conception of what a correct chemical balance would look like."

On June 30, the FDA issued its warning on antidepressant drugs, cautioning that all adults prescribed the drugs must be monitored for increased suicidal ideation and worsening depression. This marks the third serious warning of psychiatric drugs in the past year, along with the October 2004 order for black box warnings on all antidepressants administered to under 18-year olds for increased suicidal ideation, and the June 2005 warning that all Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) drugs should be reviewed for the potential to cause violence, psychosis, hallucinations and suicide.

"The public has a right to know the truth about the complete lack of scientific validity behind psychiatry's diagnoses. They clearly aren't going to get it from the APA whose mantra could be defined as 'take drugs,’" says Wiseman.

CCHR's website features testimony from parents whose children have died because they were misled into drugging their child based on the chemical imbalance fraud.

“For year psychiatry has promoted the notion of a ‘chemical imbalance’ to prescribe powerful antidepressants, cocaine-like stimulants and other psychotropic drugs to schoolchildren. Based on national statistics, more than 130,000 Colorado schoolchildren may be at risk from taking these drugs,” says Mark Carberry, spokesman for CCHR of Colorado.

To find out more about the chemical imbalance fraud go to http://www.cchr.org/chem.htm
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology to investigate, expose and eradicate psychiatric violations of human rights. For more information go to http://www.cchr.org.