Hundreds are protesting a European Psychiatric Association (EPA) Congress being held in Florence on April 1, saying the conference promotes dangerous psychotropic (mind-altering drugs) and brain-damaging interventions that puts Italians and other Europeans mental health and lives at risk. In support of this demonstration, the [Citizens Commission of Human Rights of Florida](http://www.cchrflorida.org/) is calling upon all members in the state and across the country to make their voices heard by joining the protest virtually via social media.

The demonstration, attended by representatives of Italian and European human rights groups, starts at midday at the main Florence train station (Santa Maria Novella), and marches to Piazza Indipendenza. Following the march, at 5 p.m., is the opening of a world-acclaimed exhibition on psychiatry at the Auditorium del Duomo (via de Cerretani 54r - Florence). The exhibit, which is open free to the public each day between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. until April 10, has displays and a multi-award-winning documentary that detail the harmful history of psychiatry and its contemporary abuses. This includes Italy being the birthplace of electroshock treatment that the protesters say should be banned.

The Italian chapter of the international mental health watchdog group, Citizens Commission on Human Rights, organized the march, pointing to the fact that more than 33% of Europeans aged 1829 have already taken prescribed psychotropic drugs. [1]

These drugs have documented side effects, including suicidal and homicidal thoughts, psychosis, mania, aggression, hallucinations, severe liver damage, birth defects, diabetes, heart attack, stroke and sudden death. In the United States, children younger than one year old have been prescribed some of these drugs and CCHR Italy fears the same could occur in Italy and Europe. Psychiatric drug consumption has been increasing in Italy over the past 10 years. In 2015 they represented the fourth highest group of drugs prescribed in the country, at an expense of 3.3 Billion Euros.

Speaking at the opening of the CCHR Exhibit are:

Dr. Giorgio Antonucci, psychoanalyst, writer, commissioner of CCHR International and recognized leader of the Italian anti-psychiatry movement.

Francesco Miraglia, lawyer and human rights defender

Prof. Vincenza Palmieri, founder of the program Living without psychiatric drugs, and

Mrs. Serena Perini, Council Member of the Florence Town Hall and Chairwoman of the Council Committee on Peace, Human Rights, Solidarity, International Relations, Immigration and Equal Opportunities.

We are asking all of our members throughout Florida and across the country to show their support of this demonstration by posting online on [CCHR Italys Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/ccduonlus/timeline/), said Diane Stein, President CCHR Florida.

Conflicts of Interest Exposed in Psychiatric-Pharmaceutical Industry.

The 25th EPA Congress is being held from April 1 4 in Florence with the theme Together for Mental Health. However, CCHR says psychiatrys attempt to legitimize itself and work with medicine and neuroscience is the last thing Italians and Europeans need because unlike with general medicine and neurology, psychiatrists have no scientific tests to confirm any mental disorder. They also admit they have no cures. Furthermore, unlike psychiatrists, general doctors and neurologists have no legal power to involuntarily commit patients to institutions and force brain-damaging treatments on them.

The EPA has serious conflicts of interest with at least eight pharmaceutical companies sponsoring the convention, including Janssen, Lundbeck, Sunovion, Pfizer, Pierre Fabre Laboratories, Otsuka, Shire, and Takeda.[2] Many of these companies have paid out millions of Euros to settle lawsuits against them in the United States concerning the psychiatric drugs they manufacture.

Another company financially supporting the conference is Magstim that developed transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).[3] TMS places magnetic coil being placed near the patients scalp passing a powerful, rapidly changing magnetic field through skin and bone, and inducing electrical currents in the brain.

Dr. Silvana Galderisi, the President of the EPA, has served on advisory boards for pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly and Janssen-Cilag. She had received honoraria from the Milan-based Amgen Domp, the world's largest biotechnology company;[4] Hungarian-based pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, Gedeon Richter and Oxford PharmaGenesis Ltd, which says it is the referred supplier to 7 of the top 10 global pharmaceutical companies. [5]

Wolfgang Gaebel, a German psychiatrist addressing the EPA congress, has consulted for Janssen-Cilag GmbH, Neus, Lilly Deutschland GmbH, Lundbeck GmbH & Co., Hamburg, Lundbeck Foundation, Novartis, Wyeth Pharma GmbH,[6] Hes a Faculty Member of Lundbeck International Neuroscience Foundation.[7]

Another speaker, Guy Goodwin, from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, and president of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (2013-16), has had financial ties to AstraZeneca, BMS, Eisai, Eli Lilly, GSK, Lundbeck, Sanofi-Aventis, Servier, and Wyeth.[8]

CCHRs exhibition further exposes the conflicts of interests in the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry. It comprises 75 panels and 13 video documentaries, covering 300 years of painful and harmful mental health treatments - from the early times in France until today, providing the visitors with factual evidence of psychiatric abuse that citizens need to be aware of.

This traveling exhibition has been seen by hundreds of thousands visitors in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Budapest, Paris, Tokyo, Sydney, and Rome, and will stay open to visitors until April 10. Free entrance from 10:00 to 19:00.

For further information: [www.ccdu.org](http://www.ccdu.org/)

About CCHR:

Initially established by the Church of Scientology and renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz in 1969, CCHRs mission is to eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections.

It was L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, who brought the terror of psychiatric imprisonment to the notice of the world. In March 1969, he said, Thousands and thousands are seized without process of law, every week, over the free world tortured, castrated, killed. All in the name of mental health.

Sources:

[1] Nearkasen Chau et al, Social inequalities and correlates of psychotropic drug use among young adults: a population-based questionnaire study, International Journal for Equity in Health 2008, 7:3 doi:10.1186/1475-9276-7-3; equityhealthj.com/content/7/1/3

[2] epa-congress.org/sponsorship-exhibition...

[3] magstim.com/patients

[4] investors.amgen.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=61656&p...

[5] ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4002061/;

pharmagenesis.com/about-pharmagenesis/#...

[6] dsm5.org/MeetUs/Documents/Psychosis%202...

[7] APA 2014 Scientific Program disclosure

[8] lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/239...