Law Project for Psychiatric Rights v. Matsutani, et al.

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is suing individual psychiatrists, their employers, pharmacies, state officials, and a medical education and publishing company for their roles in submitting fraudulent claims to Medicaid.

The Complaint points out the lack of science supporting the practice and the methods used by the pharmaceutical industry to induce psychiatrists to improperly prescribe these drugs.

"Even though the drug companies have been using these methods to induce psychiatrists to prescribe these drugs, it is the psychiatrists' responsibility to base their decisions on the facts, not drug company marketing," said Mr. Gottstein, continuing, "the uncritical acceptance of pharmaceutical company hype represents a massive betrayal of trust by the psychiatrists prescribing these drugs to children and youth."

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is a public interest law firm devoted to the defense of people facing the horrors of forced psychiatric drugging and electroshock. PsychRights is further dedicated to exposing the truth about psychiatric interventions and the courts being misled into ordering people subjected to these brain and body damaging drugs against their will. Extensive information about these dangers, and about the tragic damage caused by electroshock, is available on the PsychRights web site: http://psychrights.org/.

The suit is a whistleblower suit which means, not only is there a chance of putting a stop to psychiatric overprescribing under false premises which, at times, is responsible for tragic deaths, but there is also a good possibility that the growing anti-psychiatry movement will gain some financial means to make its campaign to stop psychiatric abuses more effective.

In the US, a lawsuit can be brought under the federal False Claims Act, which authorizes private parties to bring fraud actions on behalf of the Government. These cases are also called "whistleblower suits" or "qui tam," actions. Those who file them are entitled to a share in the recovery, which means a percentage of court-mandated fines is usually designated to go to those who bring the action.