A traveling exhibit opened in Austin, Texas, on June 17, 2026, exposing human rights violations in psychiatry. The exhibit, organized by the non-profit Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), features graphic panels and video excerpts from the documentary Psychiatry: An Industry of Death. It traces the history of psychiatric abuses, from the false science of treating humans as animals, through brutal treatments like lobotomies and electroconvulsive therapy, to the modern era of mass prescribing of psychotropic drugs.
Lee Spiller, Director of the Texas chapter of CCHR, emphasized the importance of learning from history. "Knowing history is supposed to be the best protection against history repeating itself," Spiller said. "Ironically, and in spite of global efforts to reduce force and coercion in psychiatric treatment, psychiatry seems bent on repeating such history."
Nelson Linder, President of the Austin NAACP, stressed the need to protect the rights of individuals accused of mental illness. "There has never been a more important time to promote human rights," Linder said. "Working together, we can and should protect the rights of those accused of being mentally ill." He added, "There is absolutely no reason that someone should lose basic human rights because of a label."
Spiller recalled working with the NAACP for decades, including a protest 30 years ago against a psychiatrist who claimed that foster children, predominantly Black and Brown, were heavily drugged due to "bad gene pools." "Psychiatry should have dispensed with these ideas centuries ago," Spiller said.
The exhibit also addressed parental rights in school mental health and the importance of rights education. One speaker described how CCHR's rights education helped his family after a loved one was placed under emergency psychiatric detention. "The information we received from CCHR helped us to get through this and come out the other side," he said. "I'm not happy about it, but the information from CCHR, and their calming influence made it bearable."
The traveling exhibit will tour major cities in the Western United States, warning parents and community members about the dangers of psychiatric treatments. There are 14 identical traveling exhibits in countries around the world. More information is available on the CCHR website, or by watching documentaries on the Scientology Network.
