Exposing Human Rights Abuses in France’s Mental Health Hospitals
In 2016, CCHR France marked a turning point when new legislation required psychiatric hospitals to record every instance of restraint and seclusion—a crucial step toward transparency.
But records are meaningless if they remain unexamined. With more than 120,000 adults and children placed in seclusion in French psychiatric wards each year, CCHR France set out to expose what was really happening behind locked doors and to demand justice for those affected.
Using France’s freedom of information law, which allows citizens to request government-held documents, CCHR began filing formal requests to obtain hospitals’ restraint and seclusion reports.
Hundreds of requests later, CCHR uncovered cases where patients had been placed in seclusion for up to 694 consecutive days, while others had been restrained for more than 1,300 days without release. CCHR compiled these findings into a detailed report and distributed it to over 2,900 government and health authorities, revealing a pattern of abuse that had gone unchecked for years.
Despite the backlash from within the psychiatric establishment, CCHR refused to back down. The team briefed Members of Parliament, exposing hospitals that ignored transparency laws and highlighting the urgent need for independent oversight.
“Patients had been placed in seclusion for up to 694 consecutive days, while others had been restrained for more than 1,300 days without release.”
Lawmakers took notice and issued more than 100 formal inquiries, leading to a groundbreaking ruling that every instance of restraint and seclusion must now be monitored by independent bodies such as CCHR.
CCHR then took its fight to Brussels, submitting a petition to the European Parliament calling for psychiatric reform across Europe—most importantly, protection for minors without a legal voice. The effort produced a historic result: an official “Notice to Members” sent to all 720 members of the European Parliament, urging every member state to end coercive psychiatric practices and establish independent oversight.
FACTS
PRESCRIBING TO KILL
Psychiatric drugs induce violence, murder and self-harm. Here are the statistics:
80
PERCENT
of all violence-linked medications per one study are psychiatric drugs
2
MASS SHOOTINGS
take place on average every 24 hours
740,000
SUICIDES
happen every year
25
PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS
were found strongly associated with violence
10.9X
MORE LIKELY
for a person on Prozac to commit a violent act than if not on the drug
END PSYCHIATRIC ABUSE
As a nonprofit mental health industry watchdog, CCHR relies on memberships and donations to carry out its mission to eradicate psychiatric violations of human rights and to clean up the field of mental health. To become part of the world’s largest movement for mental health reform, join the group that has helped enact hundreds of laws protecting citizens from abusive psychiatric practices.
