Opinions & Reports
The Numbers Don’t Lie — But the System Does
Florida Baker-Acted 161,000 People Last Year. Why Is No One Asking Whether It Worked? Last year, Florida law enforcement officers, nurses, and physicians stripped 161,576 people of their freedom; not because they had committed a crime, not because they had been...
Florida’s Mental Health Crisis: Why We Keep Funding What Doesn’t Work
Florida’s mental health system is at a crossroads, and the latest state reports show that the “solutions” being put forward are the same ones that have failed far too many families: more beds, more drugs, more coercive interventions; just with bigger budgets and...
Florida Is Locking Up 161,000 People a Year and Calling It Mental Health Care. The Data Say Otherwise
Somewhere in Florida today, a child will be handcuffed by a police officer, placed in the back of a squad car, and driven to a locked psychiatric facility; not because the child committed a crime, but because a school administrator decided the child needed a mental...
CCHR QUARTERLY REPORT: Evidence That Coercive Psychiatric Detention Fails and Harms Those It Purports to Help
Executive Summary Florida's Baker Act, the Florida Mental Health Act of 1971, authorizes law enforcement, health professionals, and courts to involuntarily detain individuals experiencing a mental health crisis for up to 72-hour psychiatric examinations. The Florida...
“Biomarkers Aren’t Proving ‘Mental Illness’, They’re Exposing How Often Real Disease Gets Missed”
Biomarkers in psychiatry should be a wake‑up call about missed physical illness, not a green light to double down on labeling people “mentally ill” while their bodies are quietly failing. A story psychiatry should not ignore The USA Today piece opens with a chilling...