“The Texas Torture Case” is not fiction. It is a true story—my story.

I am determined to bring this buried truth to the screen, to expose a government‑sanctioned brutality that has been hidden from the public for far too long. I have never acted before, yet I feel compelled to portray myself. Only the person who lived this nightmare can convey the depth of pain, the terror, and the relentless suffering inflicted through this arrogant abuse of power.

What happened in a Houston, Texas civil courtroom was not justice—it was a calculated miscarriage of it. A sweeping cover‑up, orchestrated by powerful Texas authorities and reinforced by federal agents, protected those responsible for sadistic acts committed under the guise of law and medicine. The corruption surrounding “The Texas Torture Case” seeped through every level of the Texas government, reaching all the way to the Governor’s office, and echoed within the federal system meant to protect citizens, not destroy them.

This is the true account of a physician who became the target of the very mental health system he sought to reform. Psychiatrists and institutions—those entrusted with healing—became instruments of torture, attempting to silence my efforts to bring humanity and natural care into mental health treatment. Before I was brutalized by the same abuses I had dedicated my life to eradicating, I was on the path to becoming a psychiatrist myself.

I studied psychology at Dickinson College in historic Carlisle, Pennsylvania, earning a perfect 4.0 GPA in my major and graduating Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude. In medical school at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, I excelled in psychiatry, ranking at the top of my class and receiving high praise for my clinical work—both at Jefferson and during an elective in Child Psychiatry at the University of Hawaii School of Medicine.

I was prepared to heal. Instead, I was nearly destroyed.

And now, I intend to bring this truth to the world—unfiltered, unsoftened, and undeniable.

Over the years I spent fighting to survive what I experienced as a system of cruelty and indifference, I came to a devastating realization: the institutions I once believed were dedicated to healing felt, in my own life, like engines of suffering. What I lived through shattered my faith in the profession I had dedicated so much of my life to. From my perspective, the discipline of psychiatry — which I once imagined as a path toward compassion — revealed itself to me as something far darker, far more brutal, than I ever could have imagined at the start of my career.

Looking back, I feel I made a tragic mistake in not beginning my medical path in general practice, where my passion for natural, humane care could have flourished. Instead, I found myself pulled into a world that, in my experience, rewarded force over empathy and profit over healing.

For years I have struggled under a blacklist that strangled my professional future. The silence — even abandonment — from colleagues I once respected pushed me into the role of an outsider, a medical heretic fighting alone. Each unanswered request for review, each ignored plea for accountability, deepened my belief that powerful institutions were determined to crush dissent rather than confront wrongdoing. I even attempted compromise, offering to work for reform from within the system, but those efforts were met with indifference. Over time, I became convinced that meaningful reform from the inside was impossible.

It has been many years since I was drawn to Texas under the promise of opportunity — a meeting, a new beginning, a chance to advance the career I had worked toward since childhood. I had just completed my internship, earned my New York State medical license, and passed all three days of the licensing exam in one sitting. I was young, idealistic, and ready to step into the future I had dreamed of.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I experienced next.

I still remember stepping off that early‑morning flight into Houston, unaware that my life was about to be torn apart. What followed felt like a nightmare — sudden force, overwhelming fear, and the disorienting terror of being taken somewhere against my will. I remember the shock of being confined in the back of a vehicle, handcuffed, treated like something less than human. I remember the laughter. The taunts. The sense that I had fallen into a world where normal rules no longer applied.

Instead of a proper medical evaluation, I found myself thrust into a psychiatric ward — drugged, disoriented, and terrified. My preparation for court consisted not of counsel or evidence, but of isolation, confusion, and fear. I worried constantly about my safety. I worried I might never escape.

The courtroom I faced felt nothing like justice. No jury. No sworn testimony. No chance to defend myself. Just a swift, bewildering process that left me stunned and powerless. Even my court‑appointed attorney warned that the situation was volatile and dangerous.

When I was ordered into ninety days of outpatient treatment, I stayed in Texas out of fear — fear that leaving the state might bring even worse consequences. Those ninety days felt like an eternity. I felt trapped, drugged, and stripped of my autonomy. And when I later sought help from federal authorities, hoping for intervention or at least acknowledgment, I was met with a cold dismissal that left me reeling.

Throughout all of this, independent medical and legal professionals who reviewed my situation assured me that I did not meet criteria for the diagnoses that had been used to justify my so called treatment. Yet the damage was already done. My career, my reputation, and my life trajectory had been shattered.

As the years passed, I wrestled with the emotional fallout — anxiety, fear, and the overwhelming sense of having been wronged. I questioned everything I had once believed about mental health diagnoses, about the systems that wield them, and about the ease with which a person’s life can be derailed.

And even long after the events in Texas, I felt watched, pressured, and undermined. I struggled with the belief that powerful forces were still working against me, still trying to silence me, still trying to discredit my voice. Reports I encountered online only intensified my sense that something larger was happening — something that blurred the line between technology, surveillance, and psychological manipulation. Whether others understood or believed it, this was my lived reality, and it shaped every day that followed.

Through it all, I have continued to speak out, even as I felt targeted, doubted, and attacked. My credibility, my character, and my sanity have been questioned, but I refuse to be silent. My story — my truth — has cost me everything. And yet I continue to tell it, because silence would be the final victory for those I believe tried to destroy me.

In the midst of my long battle for justice, I aligned myself with the Citizens Commission on Human Rights — an organization that echoed the very alarms I had been sounding for years. The late Dr. Thomas Szasz, one of its founders, spoke shortly before his passing in his nineties, warning that the forces shaping modern psychiatry were “far bigger than you think.” His words struck me like thunder. From my perspective, he was describing a system that felt less like medicine and more like a machinery of control — one that shaped minds, lives, and destinies in ways the public barely understood.

To me, what I witnessed had nothing to do with healing or public safety. It felt driven by power, money, and a cold political calculus. Dr. Szasz himself had walked away from psychiatry in a crisis of conscience, rejecting the wealth and prestige that came with the profession. He believed the system had become irredeemable. In my own experience, I came to share that conviction with absolute certainty.

I also became a member of Global Citizen, an organization dedicated to confronting the staggering inequities that define life for so much of humanity. Their mission resonated deeply with me. In my own journey, I saw how the psychiatric system — as I experienced it — seemed to magnify inequality, trapping vulnerable people in cycles of dependency, stigma, and despair. The more suffering created, the more the system seemed to grow.

Through all of this, I have fought to hold on to my freedom, my dignity, and my ability to speak my truth. The struggle has been long, exhausting, and costly.

If you are able, I ask for your support — any contribution that can help me continue this fight and preserve the basic human rights I have spent my life defending.

Dr Harold Mandel