An Anti-Prescription Drug Campaign Took Over LA's Billboards. It's Funded By A Prominent Scientologist.

Nancy Cartwright, best known as the voice of Bart Simpson, has previously been involved in the Church of Scientology's anti-psychiatry advocacy.

Claudia Koerner
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Los Angeles
September 25, 2019,

LOS ANGELES — Hundreds of billboards presenting distressing images and messages about the dangers of prescription drug use by children appeared seemingly overnight along LA’s busy streets last month.

“As far as we know, no parent ever overdosed on too much drug information,” one billboard read.

“Something’s wrong when an anti-suicide drug comes with an increased risk of suicide,” read another.

The warnings aimed at parents were accompanied by vibrant illustrations showing a child trapped inside an orange pill bottle, tiny hands grasping for medication, and an infant nursing a prescription instead of milk, striking a similar tone to campaigns promoting anti-vaccine misinformation and stoking fears, one public health researcher told BuzzFeed News.

Know More About Drugs, the group behind the billboards and a slick social media campaign, bills itself as an “alliance of doctors, parents & child advocates who believe parents have the right to be given factual info about prescribed psychotropic drug risks.” But while the ads take a public service tone, and the group’s website links to the Food and Drug Administration's database on medication side effects, BuzzFeed News has learned the campaign is fully funded by a celebrity Scientologist, and many of the people involved have connections to the church’s infamous advocacy against psychiatry.

Scientology takes a position that mental illness diagnoses are a hoax and treatment with medication is abusive. Nancy Cartwright, the actor best known as the voice of Bart Simpson and a Scientologist who’s been involved in the church’s anti-psychiatry advocacy, told BuzzFeed News she founded the Know More About Drugs campaign because she’s passionate about issues around prescription drugs.

The aim of the campaign, she said, is solely to promote medication guides that are available on the FDA’s website.

“I hope it inspires parents and caretakers to find out all they can about these drugs and discuss the egregious side effects with their doctor before any decisions are made,” she said in an email.

Cartwright, who is also a painter, created the artwork used for the billboards and social media posts.

“I decided that I wanted to do something impactful — even disturbing — and yet strike a chord of truth,” she said.

While Cartwright did not directly address whether her beliefs as a Scientologist played a role in her founding the campaign, she said it wasn’t her place to advise others whether or not to take medications — that’s up to parents and doctors.

“As far as religion goes, it’s not pertinent when it comes to the Know More About Drugs Alliance and campaign,” she said. Three other founding members of the group also told BuzzFeed News they did not believe Scientology’s controversial position on psychiatry influenced the group’s work.

However, Cartwright and most of the other founding members have taken part in events or programs associated with Scientology’s work on mental health, including its notorious anti-psychiatry propaganda machine, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights.

Like Know More About Drugs, CCHR seeks to inform people about the risks of psychiatric drugs, but the Scientology-founded nonprofit goes further. Experts have described its work as an anti-psychiatry crusade, and the group denies that there is any scientific basis for psychiatric treatment. In Hollywood, a couple of blocks from popular tourist attractions, the group runs the Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Museum, which is free and open to the public seven days a week. In addition to exhibits on electroconvulsive therapy and other historical treatments, the museum blames psychiatry for events including the Holocaust and the 9/11 terror attacks.

Where the groups overlap is in their desire to protect children, said Mathy Milling Downing, another founding member of the Know More About Drugs campaign. Downing, who is not a Scientologist, appeared in a CCHR video in 2009 to tell the story of her 12-year-old daughter Candace, who killed herself during a psychotic break after a hospital administered an overdose of her prescribed antidepressant.

If she had known that suicide was a potential risk, Downing said she would never have allowed her daughter to take the drug. Her mission now is to make sure other parents are informed, she said, and she’s willing to work with anyone who shares that objective.

“Why shouldn't we join together as one voice to try to right a wrong or create a safer, healthier environment for our children, one based on moving forward together?” she said in an email to BuzzFeed News. “Know More About Drugs is not based on religious affiliation. It's based on caring about the direction of our society and the wellbeing of our children.”

It was Downing’s story that first brought Cartwright to the issue of prescription drugs; the women met about 10 years ago, Cartwright said, and as a mother, she empathized with the devastation of losing a child.

Since then, Cartwright has been a presenter at CCHR’s annual awards and signed a letter that urged fellow artists to avoid psychotropic drugs and blamed psychiatry for the deaths of celebrities from Judy Garland to Kurt Cobain. The letter also blamed antidepressants and other drugs for the increase in school shootings, a claim that is not backed by science.

Unlike the strident videos and materials on “psychiatric abuse” produced by CCHR, Know More About Drugs has focused its message on the potential side effects of drugs and appealing to parents to get informed. Its website and Facebook page promote news articles on the risks of antidepressants, opioids, and other drugs for children, and encourages parents to look up FDA medication guides online, rather than depend on the literature provided by pharmacists. But even its logo highlights opposition to medication, with the group’s name partially printed in bold to read “No More Drugs.”

In addition to the billboard campaign, which one outdoor advertising company estimated translated into millions of views over four weeks, Know More About Drugs has promoted its message on Facebook with roughly 160 advertisements. Facebook would not disclose the reach of the ads on the platform, citing its policy on health-related advertisements.

A video promoted in some of the ads shows children fighting clouds of darkness, interspersed with images of prescription bottles and pills.

“What if there are serious side effects? What if your child could become addicted? What if you could make an informed decision regarding your child’s prescription opioids and psychotropic drugs before it’s too late? Would you?” the video asks.

Encouraging parents to be aware of their child’s health is a good thing, but the campaign’s focus on fear bears striking similarities to anti-vaccine misinformation, University of Pittsburgh researcher Beth Hoffman told BuzzFeed News.

Hoffman, whose work was published in the journal Vaccine, has researched the types of messages used to oppose vaccines on social media, finding they often focused on four themes: trust of the scientific community, natural alternatives, safety, and conspiracy. Like anti-vaccine messages, the billboards ultimately play on emotions, she said.

“Fear is a very strong motivator. So the pictures being used in this ad campaign, as well as a lot of the pictures we saw on social media related to vaccines, are really frightening,” she said. “I think it’s very understandable why parents who are seeing these images are scared for the health of their children.”

Dr. Scott Benson, a psychiatrist who specializes in children and adolescents, told BuzzFeed News he’s happy to see the billboards pointing parents to FDA information. Psychiatric conditions like depression and ADHD are real, he added, and he wants his patients to be fully informed partners in the treatment process.

“If you really look at the FDA guidelines, it says these medicines are really good for people,” he said. “If you have this condition, you really ought to look at medicine.”

Benson said he’s seen some patients who are afraid to take medication that could help them, while others are looking for a prescription that won’t address what’s really going on. The key, he said, is for parents to do their research, then make sure they’re getting a thorough medical evaluation for their child. In addition to the FDA, Benson recommended the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the National Institute of Mental Health’s resources for families.

All treatments carry risks, as does doing nothing, he added. With a mental illness like depression, medication can bring a risk of suicide in children and young adults, and doctors, parents, and patients need to discuss a safety plan in advance. But avoiding treatment also means a patient is at risk for suicide, he said.

“We still have to treat the condition,” he said. “It’s fine if you don’t want to take the medicine, but let’s talk about what we are going to do.”

Hoffman hopes her research can help health care providers talk through specific concerns and better understand parents’ reservations about vaccines or other treatment.

“That’s where I think public health officials and medical officials can play a role in trying to provide education about what is meant by terms like safe and effective, what are known harms, what are scientifically valid risks and benefits, and providing parents with that information so they can make the best choice for their child,” she said.

But, Hoffman added, sometimes that’s not enough. Parents today are inundated with messages about their children’s health, some of them from dubious sources, she said, and it’s up to public health professionals to do more to cut through the noise.

“Public health officials need to be creating tools related to media literacy to help people better decipher the information they’re being exposed to on social media,” Hoffman said, “[so they’ll] be able to better distinguish valid scientific information from information that may appear scientific, but isn’t actually.”

Claudia Koerner is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles.

Contact Claudia Koerner at claudia.koerner@buzzfeed.com.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/claudiakoerner/know-more-about-drugs-scientology-billboards-los-angeles

Barbara Kay: U of T's 'antipsychiatry' scholarship - and not believing in mental illness - is an attack on science

National Post
Barbara Kay

January 10, 2017

In November, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), an all-graduate school at the University of Toronto, announced it had established a world first, a scholarship in the “field” of antipsychiatry, to be named after its primary instructor, Bonnie Burstow, an associate professor in OISE’s Adult Education and Community Development department.

Burstow believes there is no proven biological basis for mental illness. She believes that psychiatric treatment — including drugs — is inherently oppressive and a violation of human rights.

If the image of Tom Cruise springs to mind at this revelation, you’re not alone. Burstow’s beliefs fall right into line with the Scientology “religion,” for which Cruise is a much-beloved and valuable poster boy. In fact, its Canadian chapter of the Citizens Commission of Human Rights, established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology to promote its antipsychiatry agenda, stated on its Facebook page that Burstow’s appointment was “very, very good news,” describing Burstow as “a rock star.”

Burstow is clearly a social justice warrior first and a scholar second. She says, “The long history of psychiatry is the long history of pathologizing women … It is also an institution that pathologizes Blacks, lesbians and gays. This intersectionality analysis is readily available through an antipsychiatry lens.”

To be fair to Barstow, her distrust of psychiatry is not unfounded. For decades, psychoanalysis — often confused with psychiatry, but not a scientific discipline or necessarily premised on a prior medical degree — was wrongly regarded with near-religious awe as a panacea to humanity’s ills. Many analysts did no harm, but others exploited their prestige to promote bizarre theories and, eventually, make psychoanalysis a sidebar in the treatment of mental illness.

Psychiatry, which does require a medical degree, is another story. It has been a work in progress. It is true that psychiatrists gave their imprimatur to homosexuality as a disorder. It is true that schizophrenia and depression were once treated in ways we now regard as unethical. It is true that Freudians infantilized women. But Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, portrayed the damaging effect of Freudian thinking in the metaphorical castration of men. That’s to say, psychiatry did not single out women or minorities for special intimidation. Psychiatry’s growing pains affected everyone.

But that was then. As in all medical disciplines, mistakes beget progress. Through scientific and pharmacological advances, psychiatry is a much changed discipline today. For Burstow to claim there is “no proven biological basis for mental illness” is demonstrably untrue. Countless studies have proved beyond any doubt that there is a genetic basis for all major psychiatric disorders, such as bipolar disorder and depression. One might just as well deny a genetic-biological basis for diabetes (which I believe Burstow’s Scientology fan club does).

True disciplines spring from pure intellectual curiosity, not the pursuit of social justice. They build on collaboration with similarly engaged scholars. Fact is piled on fact, theories are debated, evidence is adduced, lively debate ensues, and eventually a body of credible knowledge is established. Real scholarship is “for” truth. The whole idea of any scholarly field being called “anti” anything is bizarre, and runs counter to the raison d’être of the university. The prefix “anti” tells us that Burstow’s program is merely organized political activism with OISE’s endorsement and the use of their resources. And her stated goal, to “spur alternate ways of arranging society so that we aren’t inventing diseases,” contains a demonstrable lie in the service of an extreme social-engineering agenda.

It is quite disturbing that at this institute of higher learning, which presided over the discovery of insulin, stem cells, and the antipsychotic Dopamime 2, a dean and his advisers would approve this endowment in perpetuity on the grounds of “academic freedom.” And hypocritical. As we know from too many previous controversial stories, OISE’s concept of academic freedom is a one-way street: political correctness rules, and those that are incorrect find their freedom narrowly constrained.

Even though there isn’t a shred of biological proof to uphold the feminist thesis that men and women are socially constructed for difference, and plenty of biological evidence to show that they are inherently different, for example, we will never see an endowed scholarship in the field of “Anti-Feminism” at OISE. On the other hand, given OISE’s enthusiastic history in promoting anti-Israel activism, a future scholarship in “Anti-Zionism” would not surprise me.

Real academics are distressed by the Burstow scholarship; indeed many are agitated and with reason. Hamilton psychiatrist Dr. David Laing Dawson posed Burstow a question: “Your university has a Faculty of Medicine and a Department of Psychiatry. You are already on salary, I presume. Why don’t you offer to participate in Faculty of Medicine seminars and lectures and workshops to promote your ideas and opinions?”

Why? Because that would be the reasonable — and ethical — thing to do. Shame on OISE for setting this terrible precedent.



http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/barbara-kay-u-of-ts-antipsychiatry-scholarship-and-not-believing-in-mental-illness-is-an-attack-on-science

My Response To The Church Of Scientology's War Against Psychiatrics

Emma O'Connell
The Odyssey Online
April 12, 2016

This church is straining to eradicate a necessity

I would probably be dead if it were not for psychiatric medicine. If I had not undergone many types of extremely important therapies, and been given prescriptions to multiple medications by psychiatrists, I would most likely not be here right now.

The Church of Scientology holds the belief that psychiatric drugs are an evil form of abuse, and on their website, even compare them to "pre-frontal lobotomies with an ice pick through the socket." They also speak of electroconvulsive therapy as a barbaric act, yet if done correctly, it saves many lives today. The nationally famous Mayo Clinic is even a fan of it, as it now poses more benefits than risks for patients who are suffering greatly and require it.

In the same page on this website, the Church completely denounces the existence of mental health itself, and only refers to the mentally ill as "insane". The Church attempts to seem humane by stating that they do not "desire to deny the insane treatment", yet continue on to say that psychiatric drugs should not be allowed, thus already denying one form of extremely effective treatment.

The Church of Scientology does not believe in the process of providing a diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, as they refuse to deem any medical diagnosis as what it is, and refer to them only as "labels". The truth of the matter is that diagnoses are extremely helpful to patients, as they will allow the patient to be treated correctly, as he or she would not have been able to experience before his or her crucial medical diagnosis. The website seems to carry a sarcastic tone, as it will only refer to the words "treatment" and "cure" in quotation marks, not to quote someone else, but to create a connotation of incredibility. Little does the Church know that the enormous lies that they are spinning are decreasing their credibility a lot more.

What is really intriguing is that the Church preaches that psychiatric drugs are just a way for psychiatrists to "rake in billions" as "an elaborate and deadly hoax" fueled by profitable businesses. The way the Church speaks of these profitable businesses is extremely negative. The average salary for a psychiatrist is about $186,000 and they receive barely any of the money associated with the selling of the prescriptions that they write for their patients. The Church of Scientology is worth $1.75 billion and, since it is not required to pay taxes, ends up turning a huge profit. What seems even more unsettling is that the founder of the Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, was a multimillionaire. We aren't even talking low millions, either. Hubbard's net worth was $600 million. Plus, the current leader of the Church, David Miscavige, has a net worth of $50 million.

Now, what do we call an establishment not run by the government that rakes in a profit? Oh, that's right: a profitable business. As Chris Matthews states in an article from Fortune.com, "If Scientology isn't a religion, then it's just a very, very famous small business." It seems as though the Church of Scientology is using projection as a defense mechanism to hide their own ugly truth, but I'm sure they don't even know what "projection" means, seeing that it is a psychological term and all.

Citizens Commission on Human Rights is an organization created by the Church of Scientology with the supposed purpose of eliminating abuse in the psychiatric world. Their international website blatantly explains that mental disorders are not real, and spews many incorrect statements about psychiatry as a whole. This church created an entire organization to attempt to take away prescription psychiatric medicine from everyone. This in itself is abuse unto the psychiatric world. The Church continues to project its own hypocritical points and uphold an entirely contradictory organization.

I could write an entire book about Scientology and the corrupt organization it created that has been set out to destroy a whole form of a lifesaving medical practice, but I will leave you with this for now. If the Church had its way, I would never have been allowed to be prescribed medication for my psychiatric disorders. The Church of Scientology is straining to eradicate a necessity for millions of people. They want us to suffer.

http://theodysseyonline.com/appalachian-state/why-the-church-of-scientology-wants-us-to-suffer/400237

Psychiatry as Industry of Death: Scientology Blitzes Shrinks in New Clearwater Museum

FLAGLERLIVE
October 4, 2015

 Scientology-affiliated museum, “Psychiatry: Industry of Death,”
occupies most of the first floor of the new headquarters for the
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, dedicated in July.

Videos accusing psychiatrists and the drug industry of inventing diseases and defrauding the public are the centerpiece of a modest storefront museum that quietly opened this summer in downtown Clearwater.

They suggest that many drugs prescribed for anxiety, depression and other mental-health conditions are responsible for mass shootings and other violence.

The museum, “Psychiatry: Industry of Death,” occupies most of the first floor of the new headquarters for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, dedicated in July. The non-profit group is affiliated with the Church of Scientology, which has long been at odds with the field of psychiatry.

And both in words and tone, the videos portray mental-health practitioners and drugs as dangerous to patients and costly to society.

An introductory video intones over a dramatic soundtrack: “Think psychiatry has nothing to do with you? Think again,” it says. “The whole field of psychiatry has gotten into every facet of your life.”

The museum consists of a series of cubicles bathed in soft lighting, with large-screen TVs that show what sponsors call “mini-documentaries” on topics such as alleged over-drugging of soldiers, children and the elderly.

Some cover the early history of psychiatry, which Scientology considers “brutal pseudoscience.” The use of leeches, lobotomies and asylums gradually gave way to a multibillion-dollar drug industry that may seem more civilized but is just as abusive, according to the exhibits.

The museum is modeled after one of the same name at the Los Angeles headquarters of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. A CCHR press release says that nearly 200,000 visitors have toured the original.

On the videos at the Clearwater museum, people talk about being hurt by the mental-health system – labeled with a mental illness, drugged into a stupor, or held against their will in institutions.

Some professionals interviewed on screen also offer strong denunciation of mainstream psychiatrists.

“They basically believe that everyone is mentally ill,” said American University psychology professor Jeffrey Schaler.

Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, co-founder of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and author of “The Myth of Mental Illness,” died in 2012. But his image lives on in the museum, chiding colleagues for turning every human failing into a treatment opportunity.

“You smoke too much, it’s a disease,” Szasz says on-screen. “You’re too unhappy it’s a disease. You’re too thin, it’s a disease. You’re too fat, it’s a disease.”

The condemnations pile on, challenging the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis and claiming that nothing about psychiatry is legitimate and “they’re billing for it.”

“There is not one shred of evidence that any respectable scientist would consider valid demonstrating that anything that psychiatrists call mental illness are brain diseases or biochemical imbalances,” said Dr. Ron Leifer, a psychiatrist in Ithica, New York and a protégé of Szasz. “It’s all fraud.”

Health News Florida asked several national mental-health organizations to review the videos and offer opinions on whether they were accurate, but all declined. Scientology has a reputation for issuing legal threats to those who criticize its work.

One researcher willing to talk about the materials is Stephen Kent, a sociologist at the University of Alberta who studies new religions. With a co-author, he wrote an extensive review of Scientology’s battle against psychiatry that appeared in November 2012 in PubMed and was updated in January 2014.


Kent says that the late L. Ron Hubbard, who founded Scientology after writing the book “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health,” hoped that Dianetics would replace psychiatry. That didn’t happen.

“It just evoked scorn,” Kent said. “By 1969, Hubbard had become so frustrated he went to war against the mental health professions.”

Kent said CCHR’s materials on psychiatry make some valid points about early mistakes in psychiatric treatment and about today’s pop-a-pill culture. But the group fails to give appropriate credit for recent advances in diagnosis and treatment of severe mental illness.

“You’ll never see, never, a single word of praise for psychiatry in CCHR,” Kent said.

The drug industry comes in for equal criticism; in fact, several videos at the Clearwater museum suggest prescription drugs for anxiety, depression and other ills may be to blame for mass murders.

While the viewer sees footage and hears sound from scenes of indiscriminate slaughter, the screen flashes with the name of the shooter and the drugs he was prescribed.

Viewers may surmise that the drugs were the cause of the violent behavior. But Kent, the Canadian researcher, said that conclusion is unwarranted.

It could be that the drugs were prescribed but never taken, he said, or the patient may have taken the drugs but stopped abruptly rather than tapering, causing him to spiral out of control.

Kent added another possibility: Severely depressed people who lacked the energy to act on violent urges got their energy back when placed on medication but did not gain other benefits.

“The issue of psychiatric drugs causing violence is important and complicated,” Kent said. “The mere fact that a person (who commits violent acts) had been treated by a psychiatrist doesn’t mean the treatment was a factor in the violence.”

While negative side effects to drugs are a concern, Kent said, “It’s certainly not the case that psychiatric drugs cause people to become mass killers.”

The museum goes as far as suggesting that psychiatry was b ehind the Holocaust. (Carol Gentry)

CCHR’s Florida director Diane Stein said a lot of people have come by to see the Clearwater museum and that she hopes to arrange tours by civic and school groups. No one visited the museum during the weekday afternoon a Health News Florida reporter was there.

Stein said the museum is just one facet of CCHR’s activities.

Another is lobbying for public-policy issues on mental health in the Legislature. Still another is offering a hotline to advise callers of their rights on involuntary treatment, she said.

Also, CCHR investigates accusations of human rights abuses, Stein said. She cited several cases in which state disciplinary actions were brought against psychiatrists because of CCHR’s work.

Wayne Hilton of Tampa doesn’t agree with the group’s message at the museum because of what happened to his son. The boy began hearing voices at the age of 15; he developed fears that Nazis were taking over the world.

“He was trapped in his delusions, he couldn’t get out,” Hilton said.

Hilton sought help for his son at the Hillsborough Mental Health Crisis Center, where the boy was given medication for anxiety, Hilton said.

Later, at St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital in Tampa, the teenager got a thorough work-up, diagnosis of early-onset schizophrenia, and drugs appropriate for that diagnosis. He’s been stable for 2 ½ years, Hilton said.

So it makes him sad to see CCHR call psychiatry an “industry of death.”

“They saved my son’s life,” Hilton said. “I guarantee you if we had not gotten my son to the right hospital, to the right psychiatrist, to the right medication, he would not be alive today. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

CCHR’s Stein said that she thinks her group and those who see value in current mental-health treatment and drugs can find common ground. All disagree with putting sick people in jail, and want to see them get help.

“We’re not opposed to treatment, we’re opposed to what is considered treatment,” she said, offering as examples electroshock therapy, drugs with side effects that can be dangerous, and the increasing incidence of prescribing psychoactive drugs to children and the elderly just to keep them quiet.

As Stein put it, “Why are we tolerating the drugging of our society?”

–Carol Gentry, Health News Frlorida

http://flaglerlive.com/85796/scientology-psychiatry-museum/

Scientology-Backed Group Lobbied Against Texas Mental Health Bill

KORY GROW 
RollingStone.com
July 14, 2015

A group associated with the Church of Scientology lobbied against a vetoed Texas bill that would have allowed doctors in the state to detain dangerous and mentally ill patients, The Texas Tribune reports.

The paper has obtained records showing that a conglomerate group that included the Scientology-founded Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) sent information to the state's Republican governor, Greg Abbott, who vetoed the bill. (Abbott is Christian.)

The legislation would have given emergency room doctors a four-hour window in which they could detain patients who were mentally ill or appeared unsafe until authorities could assess the situation. Two weeks before Abbott's veto, a group calling itself the SB 359 Veto Coalition hand-delivered a letter to the governor opposing the bill, the paper reports. The bill had passed through the state House and Senate with ease, and the governor's decision to stop the bill surprised many.

Other groups who were involved in the Veto Coalition include the Texas Home School Coalition, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the anti-vaccine group Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education and Texans for Accountable Government. A LULAC staffer said his organization thought the law could be used unconstitutionally against non-English speakers.

"I don't think that it is very beneficial to try to break down those grassroots organizations," Johana Scot, the head of the Parent Guidance Center, which signed the Veto Coalition letter, told the Tribune.

Lee Spiller, a lobbyist for the Church of Scientology-backed CCHR, which is against psychiatry, was also in touch with the governor's office; the Tribune reports that he sent an email to the state's First Lady the day after the veto. "Please pass on my warmest regards and sincere thanks for upholding individual liberties and restoring my faith in our constitutional form of government," he reportedly wrote. "I have not forgotten about your last message. Please consider yourself invited to our office, and any event we hold, any time."

When he vetoed the bill, Abbott voiced sentiments that had appeared in the coalition's letter, saying it raised "serious constitutional concerns," among other things.

A group of doctors had previously sent Abbott a letter warning him of the CCHR's association with the Church of Scientology. "Their positions are well outside the mainstream," they wrote.

The governor "should have reached out to physicians and other medical personnel who provide care in the real world of our emergency rooms before vetoing this legislation," said the Texas Medical Association in a statement, which lobbied in favor of the bill.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/scientology-group-lobbied-against-texas-mental-health-bill-20150714