CCHR: Taxpayer Billions Wasted on Mental Health Research as Outcomes Deteriorate
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LOS ANGELES - PrAtlas -- By CCHR International

Research waste at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is reportedly costing U.S. taxpayers over $100 million annually, according to analyses of completed NIH-funded trials. A review of grants completed between 2017 and 2019 found 137 clinical trials involving 41,501 children that never made their results public, despite being funded with $362 million.[1] With an annual budget of $48 billion, the NIH is the largest public funder of health, including mental health research, in the world. Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) International, a mental health industry watchdog, says transparency failures, poor patient benefits, and mounting evidence of waste are a serious concern.

CCHR says the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) merits close scrutiny. Critics note that NIMH-funded research has repeatedly shocked, brain-damaged, restrained, and dissected animals. Yet new drugs that reportedly tested "safe and effective" in animals fail in human clinical trials about 95% of the time.[2]

Across at least a dozen major U.S. universities and federal laboratories, the NIMH spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on invasive and often lethal animal experiments in a speculative attempt to explain human behavior. These studies have involved deliberately inducing severe psychological distress in animals; surgically implanting electrodes into the brains of monkeys, mice, bats, fish, ants, and insects; depriving animals of food or water to force compliance; simulating predator attacks through virtual reality; and ultimately killing and dissecting animals to examine their brains.[3]

Mounting Congressional concern is reflected in Senator Rand Paul's Festivus Report 2025, which exposed millions in federal spending on frivolous and cruel animal studies, including over $1 million spent on teaching teenage ferrets to binge drink alcohol and $14,643,280 to make monkeys play a "Price Is Right"-inspired video game, and more.[4]

With many individual projects costing $1–5 million each, including $25 million spent on studying fruit fly behavior, and despite decades of this funding and allegations of cruelty, there is no evidence these animal experiments have translated into meaningful improvements in mental-health outcomes for Americans. On the contrary, rates of depression, anxiety, suicide, disability, and psychiatric drug use have continued to rise, while serious adverse effects, including violence, self-harm, and chronic disability, are now widely documented. "The result is a research paradigm that inflicts extensive harm on animals, consumes enormous public resources, and has failed to deliver measurable benefits to human mental health," said Jan Eastgate, president of CCHR International.

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Former NIMH director, psychiatrist Thomas Insel, who led the institute from 2002 to 2015, acknowledged this failure after more than $20 billion in spending. He admitted: "I don't think we moved the needle in reducing suicide, reducing hospitalizations, improving recovery for the tens of millions of people who have mental illness."

Clinical psychologist Roger McFillin, Ph.D., says NIMH research has focused on the biomedical model in a futile quest to reduce human suffering to faulty genes and brain circuits, yet "suicide rates have soared" and "youth mental health collapsed." The biological paradigm, he says, "hasn't just failed, it has actively harmed by teaching people their suffering is a brain defect," pathologizing normal responses to life adversity.[5]

Meanwhile, the treatments derived from psychiatric research carry severe risks. New research shows that people who take anxiolytics, hypnotics and sedatives, and antidepressants are more likely to develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive neurological disease, causing muscular damage. At the moment, there's no cure for the progressive debilitation that ALS causes.[6]

Neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) and serotonin syndrome (SS) are acute, drug-induced medical emergencies affecting the central nervous system. NMS carries an estimated mortality rate of 5.6% to 10% and is characterized by severe muscle rigidity, hyperthermia, and altered mental status, including delirium, agitation, mutism, somnolence, and coma. Serotonin syndrome is a pharmacologically induced condition caused by excessive serotonin activity in the brain and can be life-threatening. Symptoms include anxiety, agitation, confusion, delirium, hallucinations, muscle rigidity, seizures, and coma.[7]

Dr. Josef Witt-Doering, a former Food and Drug Administration medical officer, warns that SSRI and SNRI antidepressants can leave individuals "essentially lobotomized," causing cognitive impairment alongside profound and sometimes persistent sexual dysfunction.[8]

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), used on at least 100,000 Americans each year, has been associated with significant adverse effects, including memory loss, difficulty concentrating, emotional blunting, relationship impairment, and loss of vocabulary, according to a recently published international survey of ECT recipients. Respondents also reported brain and cognitive damage.[9]

Recently, the White House cancelled nearly $28 million in federal animal-testing grants as agencies begin shifting toward non-animal research alternatives.[10]

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CCHR, established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Professor of Psychiatry, Thomas Szasz, notes this step is overdue but insufficient. It urges Congress and federal oversight bodies to conduct a full financial and performance audit of NIMH mental-health research spending.

Eastgate states: "Taxpayers deserve accountability. After decades of failed science, escalating harm, and worsening mental-health outcomes, Congress must require those funded to provide measurable, real-world results."

Sources:

[1] Till Bruckner, "NIH waste far over $100 million in medical research funding every year – new study," Transparimed, 21 Feb. 2023, www.transparimed.org/single-post/nih-research-waste

[2] Amanda Hays, "10 Terrible NIMH-Funded Animal Experiments—and How You Can Help End Them," PETA, 8 Jan. 2024, www.peta.org/news/10-terrible-nimh-funded-animal-experiments/

[3] Amanda Hays, "10 Terrible NIMH-Funded Animal Experiments—and How You Can Help End Them," PETA, 8 Jan. 2024, www.peta.org/news/10-terrible-nimh-funded-animal-experiments/

[4] Senator Rand Paul, "Festivus Report, 2025," Dec. 2025, www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/reps/dr-paul-releases-2025-festivus-report-on-government-waste/; www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/FESTIVUS-2025-FINAL.pdf

[5] Dr. Roger McFillin, "The Billion Dollar Brain Myth, How NIMH's biological reductionism stole hope, meaning, and billions from mental health care," Radically Genuine, 21 Nov. 2024, drmcfillin.substack.com/p/the-billion-dollar-brain-myth

[6] David Nield, "Common Psychiatric Medications May Increase Risk of ALS," Science Alert, 10 June 2025, www.sciencealert.com/common-psychiatric-medications-may-increase-risk-of-als

[7] Hannah Actor-Engel, PhD, "Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome vs Serotonin Syndrome," Neurology Advisor, 4 June 2025, www.neurologyadvisor.com/ddi/neuroleptic-malignant-syndrome-vs-serotonin-syndrome/

[8] "Mounting Evidence of Persistent Sexual Dysfunction from Antidepressants Demands FDA Action," CCHR International, 9 Jan. 2026, www.cchrint.org/2026/01/09/mounting-evidence-of-persistent-sexual-dysfunction-from-antidepressants-demands-fda-action/; Dr. Joseph Mercola, "Why Antidepressants Aren't Fixing Depression — and How the System Keeps That Truth Buried," Mercola.com, 4 Jan. 2026, articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2026/01/04/ssri-side-effects-long-term.aspx

[9] John Read, et al., "The adverse effects of electroconvulsive therapy beyond memory loss: an international survey of recipients and relatives," International Journal of Mental Health, 19 Nov. 2025, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00207411.2025.2576946#d1e193

[10] Madeleine May, et. al., "White House slashes medical research on monkeys and other animal testing, sparking fierce new debate," CBS, 25 Sept. 2025, www.cbsnews.com/news/animal-medical-research-patients/