Research indicates psychiatric confinements against a person’s will have been increasing at three times the rate of the increase in population. Investigations and U.S. Justice Department complaints have alleged that patients have been held and their insurance billed unnecessarily.
-- CCHR’s New Year’s Resolution: End the Fraud and Abuse of Involuntary Psychiatric Detentions
Research indicates psychiatric confinements against a person’s will have been increasing at three times the rate of the increase in population. Investigations and U.S. Justice Department complaints have alleged that patients have been held and their insurance billed unnecessarily.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has resolved, as a major focus of its national efforts in 2025, to raise awareness of the abusive and costly practice of detaining people against their will in psychiatric facilities, with the goal of ending the practice. CCHR is a mental health industry watchdog.
State laws on psychiatric detentions vary in the U.S., but nearly all states allow involuntary inpatient civil commitments, evaluation and treatment of individuals deemed a danger to themselves or others. However, this determination is completely subjective, which opens the potential for fraud and abuse.
CCHR chapters around the world have for years complained to the proper authorities on behalf of individuals reporting to the organization that they were wrongly committed to a psychiatric facility, forced to take psychiatric drugs, held for long periods of time, traumatized by circumstances in the facilities, and released in worse condition than when they were first detained.
Exposés of the practice have also appeared in the press. A recent investigation by reporters at the New York Times focused on Acadia Healthcare, one of the largest chains of for-profit behavioral health facilities in the U.S., and concluded, “Acadia has lured patients into its facilities and held them against their will, even when detaining them was not medically necessary.”
Acadia allegedly maximized insurance billing by using various excuses to continue holding patients, sometimes until their insurance coverage ran out. Acadia reportedly charges as much as $2,200 a day for some patients. With the bulk of Acadia’s revenue coming from government insurance plans, including Medicaid and Medicare, taxpayers are footing the bill for most of these detentions.
In September, Acadia agreed to pay $19.85 million to settle allegations that the company knowingly submitted false claims for payment to Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE for medically unnecessary services for patients it improperly admitted to its facilities and patients held for excessive lengths of stay, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Similarly, in 2020 another of the largest U.S. chains of for-profit psychiatric facilities, Universal Health Services, agreed to pay $117 million to settle Justice Department allegations that included billing for medically unnecessary inpatient admissions and keeping patients longer than medically necessary.
Evidence shows that involuntary commitment has become far more prevalent in recent years. A 2020 study at the UCLA School of Public Affairs found that in the 22 states which provided civil commitment data for the five-year period ending in 2016, the states’ average yearly involuntary detention rate increased at three times the rate of their average population growth. It has been estimated that four of every ten admissions to psychiatric facilities are involuntary, a figure that reportedly rose by 27% over the last decade.
The increased risk of suicide in the period following discharge from psychiatric confinement is well recognized, with the risk even greater for those who are admitted to psychiatric facilities against their will.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has called on countries to end coercive mental health practices. “People subjected to coercive practices report feelings of dehumanization, disempowerment and being disrespected. Many experience it as a form of trauma or re-traumatization leading to a worsening of their condition and increased experiences of distress,” WHO advised.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is dedicated to ending this abusive practice. “The power of a psychiatrist or other mental health practitioner to deprive individuals of their liberty based on purely subjective evaluations, which will always have the potential for abuse and which research has shown to be harmful to patients, must stop,” said Anne Goedeke, president of the CCHR National Affairs Office. “This will be a major focus for us in 2025, as we work to restore human rights to the field of mental health.”
About the company: The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuse and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health.
Contact Info:
Name: Anne Goedeke
Email: Send Email
Organization: Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office
Address: Washington, DC
Website: https://www.CCHRNational.org
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ufOUHeS-ZY
Release ID: 89149716
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