MedPage Today: SAN FRANCISCO, -- Physicians gathering for the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting here were greeted with a noisy street protest by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an offshoot of the Church of Scientology.
From its earliest days in the 1950s, Scientologists have waged a campaign accusing the psychiatric profession of a range of abuses. Now conducted under the CCHR's banner, the campaign currently portrays psychiatry as an "industry of death." Demonstrations like the one at this year's meeting have become a fixture at the annual gatherings.
Below, MedPage Today video report: APA President Nada Stotland, M.D., explains:
I think to some degree we've noticed the media are getting less and less interested in listening to the allegations of Scientology, many of which are patently ridiculous, you know, that psychiatrists caused the Holocaust or things of that sort. And so it doesn't cause as much disruption as it had in years past when that was the first time we had people marching up and down.
There is no other medical specialty I know of that has its own particular,, dedicated hate group. And there is no other medical specialty in which people are already stigmatized and afraid as much as they are of psychiatry, so it's a very unfortunate conjunction of those two things.
Scientology conducts these protests and this war on psychiatry under a front group known as the Citizens Commission for Human Rights - not a human rights organization. This front group is famous for producing the propaganda film - "Psychiatry: Industry of Death". This film contains various false information about the science of psychiatry in which the scientologists blame psychiatrists for 9/11.
Also, the CCHR has exploited tragedies to boaster their message in the past. Fox 25 News in Boston have compared this group to another notorious hate group - Westboro Baptist Church.
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