Mental health front groups

I subscribe to a newsletter called Natural News (http://www.naturalnews.com/). Don't know how I first started subscribing, but it arrives in my in-box daily. I myself have wondered if it is a front for a certain unnamed American politician, whose name keeps cropping up affirmatively in the newsletter. Here's what the website has to say about itself.

The NaturalNews Network is a non-profit collection of public education websites covering topics that empower individuals to make positive changes in their health, environmental sensitivity, consumer choices and informed skepticism. The NaturalNews Network is owned and operated by Truth Publishing International, Ltd., a Taiwan corporation. It is not recognized as a 501(c)3 non-profit in the United States, but it operates without a profit incentive, and its key writer, Mike Adams, receives absolutely no payment for his time, articles or books other than reimbursement for items purchased in order to conduct product reviews.

Whatever this organization is, many of its news items are right up my skeptical and holistic alley, like this item from today's newsletter:

"Don't believe all the goody-goody "mental health groups" that claim to help teens and adults with their brain problems. Many of these are really just psycho-pharma front groups, and CCHR has exposed them all:

(NaturalNews) A highly effective public relations technique is the "third party technique" of creating front groups to endorse or promote the need of any service or product. The first party is the original group or client that would benefit more from increased public trust or affinity. The second group is the public or consumers. A third group is created with a contrived name to appear publicly as a disinterested party endorsing the industry of the first party.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/033453_psychiatry_front_groups.html#ixzz1WWaj0fwt


A link inside the body of the article takes you over to the CCHR (Citizens Commission on Human Rights) for website, which readers of this blog probably already know was founded in 1969 by Dr. Thomas Ssasz and the Church of Scientology. Many people say CCHR is a front for Scientology. Be that as it may, and because I'm catholic in my tastes and opinions, here's what the CCHR website has to say about these front mental health front groups, who are listed by the way, on the CCHR website.

Certainly any organization claiming to be for the rights of patients diagnosed mentally ill would have as their primary goal, full informed consent in the field of mental health – including full and complete disclosure of all drug risks, the right to refuse treatment, the right to know that psychiatric diagnoses are not medical conditions (evident by the fact there is not one confirmatory medical/scientific test). Above all such groups would provide patients with an abundance of information on non-harmful, non- drug, medical solutions and options considering the dangerous and well documented risks of psychiatric drugs by international drug regulatory agencies.

These groups do not.