“African Americans should reject being channeled into a system historically and presently designed to control, not heal.” – Rev. Fred Shaw, co-founder of CCHR’s Task Force Against Racism and Modern-Day Eugenics, and president of the Inglewood-South Bay branch of the NAACP

New study published during Mental Health Month underscores deadly restraints, with African Americans over represented. Systemic abuse is rooted in psychiatric racial profiling and eugenics, watchdog says. Calls for ban of coercive restraint practices.

By CCHR International
The Mental Health Industry Watchdog
May 2, 2025

A disturbing new study, “I Can’t Breathe” – A Study of Civil Litigated Cases on Prone Restraint Deaths, published in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, reviewed 229 fatal police restraint deaths between 2010 and 2019. Among those where race was reported, 38% of the victims were African American. In 58% of cases, death occurred within five minutes of restraint; in over 20%, victims gasped, “I can’t breathe,” signs of lethal respiratory failure.[1]

These deaths are rooted in eugenics theories that equate force and coercion with control, and the overrepresentation of African Americans in restraint deaths amplifies longstanding concerns about racial profiling driven by psychiatric and psychological eugenics—pseudo-scientific and false theories declaring Black inferiority. Such dangerous ideologies have permeated society, placing both civilians and officers at risk.

Extending this culture of coercion, “warrior-style” or “killology” police training, created by a psychology professor, Dave Grossman, over 20 years ago, fosters a kill-or-be-killed mentality.[2] As Mother Jones reported, this conditioning “often runs the risk of the use of unnecessary, and sometimes, fatal force.”[3]

One high-profile case, Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man, was detained without cause in 2019. After resisting, he was injected by paramedics with the psychiatric sedative ketamine, often used as an anesthetic, resulting in his death.[4] Emergency Medical Service workers and police use the term “excited delirium” to describe a “medical emergency” that they claim justifies injecting a person with ketamine, but, in many cases, the person is simply protesting unjust actions. The AMA “opposes the use of ketamine and other sedative/hypnotic agents as a pharmacological intervention for agitated individuals in out-of-hospital settings to chemically restrain an individual solely for law enforcement.”[5] Although not a medical diagnosis, “excited delirium” was referenced in 31% of the police restraints study.

While convictions followed Mr. McClain’s death, CCHR notes that psychiatric chemical restraints leading to patient deaths often go unpunished.

His tragic death is emblematic of a broader pattern: behavioral restraint and chemical sedation disproportionately harm African Americans, often without accountability. These abuses are not isolated incidents but part of a systemic problem fueled by discredited psychiatric and psychological theories. As the restraint study, which relies upon litigated cases, warns, “Prone restraint deaths fracture the relationship between law enforcement and their communities, further eroding public trust.”

This erosion of trust is compounded by ongoing psychological profiling practices that continue to pathologize African Americans today.

A 2017 New York Law School Journal report confirmed that psychological profiling persists: “Behavior by African-Americans is more often interpreted as ‘dangerous’ than identical behavior by whites,” and African Americans are more often labeled with psychiatric conduct disorders.[6]

The roots of this injustice stretch back to slavery, when Benjamin Rush—the so-called “father of American psychiatry”—defined Blacks as medically diseased, requiring segregation. He said they suffered from a form of leprosy, “Negritude,” that was cured with whitened skin. Dr. Samuel Cartwright, a student of Rush, claimed that runaway slaves were mentally ill, fabricating diagnoses like Drapetomania, for which “whipping the devil out” of slaves was promoted as a medical cure for their desire for freedom.[7] Further myths falsely claimed Blacks were “more durable to pain”—a bias that lingers today in the form of “Black hardiness” stereotypes that continue to influence biased treatment and restraint practices.[8]

CCHR highlights the systemic racism embedded in modern psychiatry:

• African Americans, 13.5% of the U.S. population, account for 33.6% of schizophrenia diagnoses and 21.4% of ADHD diagnoses.[9]

• Among children, Black youth are vastly diagnosed: 24.2% labeled with ADHD, 28% with conduct disorder, and 27.4% with oppositional defiant disorder[10], despite the lack of biological tests to confirm such disorders.

• Black hospital emergency room patients are 63% more likely to be chemically restrained than white patients.[11]

• 2012 – 2019: Of nearly 30,000 teens and adults who received inpatient psychiatric treatment, Black patients were 85% more likely to be restrained than their white counterparts and multiracial patients.[12]

• Black patients face longer and more frequent restraint than white patients in psychiatric settings.[13]

• African Americans made up 22% of restraint-related deaths in a variety of settings, including wilderness camps, residential treatment facilities, state institutions and psychiatric hospitals.[14]

Further, psychiatrists routinely prescribe African Americans higher doses of antipsychotic drugs, despite evidence that they metabolize them more slowly, placing them at greater risk of tardive dyskinesia (TD).[15] This is marked by involuntary hand tremors and uncontrollable muscle movements. African Americans are twice as likely to develop TD compared to whites.[16]

Pharmaceutical companies market new psychotropic drugs to “treat” TD—without stressing that antipsychotics caused it in the first place. These add-on drugs often cause the same disabling symptoms, including hand trembling and abnormal movements.[17] Meanwhile, antipsychotics themselves carry major risks, including diabetes, brain shrinkage, compulsive behaviors, suicidality, death,[18] and, as a recent study found, several are linked to breast cancer.[19]

They Said, “I Can’t Breathe.” They Begged for Help. They Died in Psychiatric Restraints.

Children whose deaths exemplify this brutal system of restraint use in psychiatric and behavioral facilities include:

• Ja’Ceon Terry, 7 – pinned down at a behavioral center; died of asphyxiation, and ruled a homicide.[20]

• Cornelius Frederick, 16 – restrained for throwing a sandwich; he died after gasping, “I can’t breathe.” It was ruled a homicide.[21]

• Jeremiah Flemming, 15 – restrained by a mental health worker; lost consciousness and died.

• Omega Leach, 17 – pushed face-down; suffered fatal injuries without accountability.

• Roshelle Clayborne, 16 – suffocated in restraint, blood trickling from her mouth.

• Andrew McClain, 11 – died after being restrained over a minor behavioral issue.

• Alexis Evette Richie, 16 – forcibly sedated and restrained; died of neglect and delay.

Each death reflects systemic betrayal—not isolated incidents but symptoms of an abusive system protected from accountability.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) issued an apology in January 2021 for its “role in perpetrating structural racism.”[22] This coincided with psychiatrists seeking mental health funding and research grants to target African Americans and people of color for treatment,[23] which would continue to funnel them into a system of coercion masked as care.

The APA’s own admissions reveal:

• Failure to support Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and civil rights legislation abolishing segregation in schools.[24]

• Labeling Black civil rights activists in the 1960s as mentally ill with “protest psychosis” and drugging them with antipsychotics.[25]

• Thousands of poor Black women and girls, some as young as 9, were forcibly sterilized.[26]

Today, psychiatry pathologizes reactions to racism as PTSD, with the APA suggesting that racism leaves a person with a “perceived sense” of an “act of prejudice.”[27] CCHR says it’s not “perception,” but a reality of real experiences of oppression.

Typical “treatments” for PTSD include antidepressants, which are linked to agitation, suicidal behavior, hallucinations, sexual dysfunction, and TD.[28]

International Condemnations: Psychiatric Coercion = Torture

The United Nations and World Health Organization have condemned coercive psychiatric practices as violations of international torture prohibitions.

• The UN Special Rapporteur found psychiatric interventions performed without consent “may well amount to torture.”[29]

• WHO/UN Human Rights Office’s 2023 Guideline: Coercive psychiatric practices (involuntary hospitalization, forced drugging, electroshock) and restraint violate international prohibitions against torture. “The use of any coercive measure in all mental health services is prohibited.”[30]

Despite these clear mandates, African Americans continue to suffer under coercive psychiatric practices. Rev. Fred Shaw, co-founder of CCHR’s Task Force Against Racism and Modern-Day Eugenics, and president of the Inglewood-South Bay branch of the NAACP, warns: “African Americans should reject being channeled into a system historically and presently designed to control, not heal.”

CCHR and its Task Force reinforce the need to end coercion, banning forced treatments, chemical and mechanical restraints, and “killology” police training, as well as demanding accountability for the use of coercive mental health practices that result in harm or death.

References:

[1] Alon Steinberg, et al., “I can’t breathe” – A study of civil litigated cases on prone restraint deaths,” Journ. of Forensic and Legal Medicine, May 2025, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1752928X25000630

[2] https://www.cchrint.org/2020/09/15/task-force-wants-psychological-killology-police-training-investigated/; https://www.killology.com/bio

[3] https://www.cchrint.org/2020/09/15/task-force-wants-psychological-killology-police-training-investigated/; “Minneapolis Banned Warrior-Style Police Training. Its Police Union Kept Offering It Anyway,” Mother Jones, 28 May 2020, https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/05/bob-kroll-minneapolis-warrior-police-training/

[4] https://www.cchrint.org/2023/12/22/cchr-calls-for-investigation-amid-ketamine-safety-concerns/

[5] https://boleslawfirmllc.com/2022/04/01/what-is-ketamine-and-why-are-police-using-it-as-a-chemical-restraint/

[6] “Michael L. Perlin, et al., “Tolling For the Aching Ones Whose Wounds Cannot Be Nursed’: The Marginalization of Racial Minorities and Women in Institutional Mental Disability Law,” New York Law School, Journal of Gender, Race, and Justice, Vol. 20, Issue 3 (Summer 2017), pp. 431-45

[7] Samuel A. Cartwright, M.D., “Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race,” New Orleans & Surgical Journal, 1851; Thomas Szasz, Insanity, The Idea and Its Consequences, (John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, 1990), p. 306, 307; https://www.cchrint.org/2019/07/17/minority-mental-health-month-may-spell-mental-health-slavery/

[8] https://www.cchrint.org/2020/06/09/naacp-inglewood-south-bay-executive-and-cchr-calls-for-ban-on-restraints-in-psychiatric-hospitals/; https://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/revival-of-raced-based-medicine-eugenics-religion-and-the-black-experience/

[9] https://cchrnational.org/2022/11/17/new-government-report-provides-evidence-racism-is-still-entrenched-in-states-mental-health-services/; https://www.samhsa.gov/data/report/2020-mental-health-client-level-data-annual-report

[10] https://cchrnational.org/2022/11/17/new-government-report-provides-evidence-racism-is-still-entrenched-in-states-mental-health-services/; https://www.samhsa.gov/data/report/2020-mental-health-client-level-data-annual-report

[11] https://cchrnational.org/2023/11/07/cchr-warns-new-study-indicates-black-patients-in-psychiatric-facilities-more-likely-to-be-restrained-and-for-longer/, “Racial disparities in the management of emergency department patients presenting with psychiatric disorders,” Ann Epidemiology, May 2022, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35227925/

[12] https://cchrnational.org/2023/11/07/cchr-warns-new-study-indicates-black-patients-in-psychiatric-facilities-more-likely-to-be-restrained-and-for-longer/

[13] Sonali Singal, B.S. et al., “Race-Based Disparities in the Frequency and Duration of Restraint Use in a Psychiatric Inpatient Setting,” Psychiatric Services, 19 Oct. 2023, https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.20230057

[14] “National Review of Restraint Related Deaths of Children and Adults with Disabilities: The Lethal Consequences of Restraint,” Equip for Equality, 2011, https://www.equipforequality.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/National-Review-of-Restraint-Related-Deaths-of-Adults-and-Children-with-Disabilities-The-Lethal-Consequences-of-Restraint.pdf, p. 30

[15] “Best Practices: Racial and Ethnic Effects on Antipsychotic Prescribing Practices in a Community Mental Health Center,” Psychiatric Services, 1 Feb. 2003,
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ps.54.2.177

[16] https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/examining-factors-influence-antipsychotic-prescribing-decisions; https://resources.healthgrades.com/right-care/mental-health-and-behavior/what-black-americans-should-know-about-taking-antipsychotic-medications

[17] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/10/11/consumers-beware-of-antipsychotics-long-term-debilitating-effects/; https://www.cchrint.org/2025/04/11/blaming-patients-for-failed-psychiatric-treatments-to-fuel-a-51-billion-brain-device-industry/

[18] https://www.cchrint.org/2022/11/11/fdas-psychotropic-drug-risk-medication-guides/

[19] “J&J and Eli Lilly Concealed Breast Cancer Risks in Blockbuster Antipsychotics for Decades, Wisner Baum Lawsuit Alleges,” PR Newswire, 23 Apr. 2023, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/jj-and-eli-lilly-concealed-breast-cancer-risks-in-blockbuster-antipsychotics-for-decades-wisner-baum-lawsuit-alleges-302436429.html

[20] https://www.cchrint.org/2022/09/30/mental-illness-awareness-week-another-restraint-another-death/

[21] https://www.cchrint.org/2020/06/09/naacp-inglewood-south-bay-executive-and-cchr-calls-for-ban-on-restraints-in-psychiatric-hospitals/; https://www.breakingcodesilence.org/about-us/in-memoriam/

[22] https://www.psychiatry.org/News-room/News-Releases/apa-apologizes-for-its-support-of-racism-in-psychi

[23] https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-apology-for-its-support-of-structural-racism

[24] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/01/26/american-psychiatric-associations-apology-for-harming-african-americans-rejected/

[25] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/04/27/cchr-racism-task-force-support-moves-to-ban-restraint-chokeholds-warrior-training/; Megan Brooks, “APA Apologizes for Past Support of Racism in Psychiatry,” Medscape, 19 Jan 2019, https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/944352?src=wnl_edit_tpal&uac=345404PY&impID=3143084&faf=1; Jonathan M. Metzl, The Protest Psychosis, How Schizophrenia became a Black Disease, (Beacon Press, Boston, 2009), p. xiv

[26] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/01/26/american-psychiatric-associations-apology-for-harming-african-americans-rejected/; http://mississippiappendectomy.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/black-women-in-the-1960s-and-1970s/; “On Indigenous Peoples Day, recalling forced sterilizations of Native American women,” Minnesota Post, 14 Oct. 2019, https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2019/10/on-indigenous-peoples-day-recalling-forced-sterilizations-of-native-american-women/

[27] https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/diversity/education/stress-and-trauma/african-americans

[28] https://www.cchrint.org/2020/06/09/naacp-inglewood-south-bay-executive-and-cchr-calls-for-ban-on-restraints-in-psychiatric-hospitals/; https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand_tx/meds_for_ptsd.asp; https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/in-depth/ssris/art-20044825; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5472076/

[29] Mental health and human rights, Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 28 Sept. 2018

[30] World Health Organization, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Guidance on Mental Health, Human Rights and Legislation,” 9 Oct. 2023