Opinions & Reports
Florida Is Locking Up Kids for Profit — And We Have the Receipts
Imagine dropping your child off at school in the morning and receiving a phone call hours later telling you they've been transported to a psychiatric facility; without your knowledge, without your consent, and without any opportunity to say goodbye. This is not a...
Mental Health Reform Means Less Coercion, More Rights
America’s mental health crisis is real, but the answer is not to double down on coercion, expand forced treatment, or let federal policy drift toward a one-size-fits-all model that too often puts bureaucracy ahead of people. The recent federal tracker from KFF shows a...
The Pill That Promises Everything — But Proves Very Little
When "Feeling Better" Isn't the Same as Being Healed The recent buzz surrounding Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s call to scrutinize antidepressant prescribing practices has ignited a firestorm of passionate, deeply personal responses from Americans across the...
Pennsylvania to Florida, Acadia’s Pattern Demands Action
A shocking new series of lawsuits against Acadia Healthcare’s Southwood Psychiatric Hospital in Pennsylvania should serve as a warning to every Florida lawmaker, regulator, and parent. According to the complaints, child and adolescent patients at Southwood were...
From Courtroom to Crime Scene: What Florida’s Centerstone Scandal Reveals About Mental Health “Care”
Florida’s latest mental health scandal is not a one‑off tragedy; it is a case study in how a publicly funded system can fail both the people it claims to help and the communities that pay for it. A billion‑dollar brand, a deadly gap Centerstone of Florida is no fringe...
Veterans Deserve Truth, Not Blindfolds, Before They’re Drugged
Walk into any VA clinic or community mental health center serving veterans in Florida and you will hear the same heartbreaking themes: “I was never told,” “No one warned me,” “They just put me on more pills.” Men and women who once wore the uniform of this country are...
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...