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Psychiatrists regularly fail to obtain informed consent by not fully informing their patients of the risks of psychotropic drugs as well as overstating their benefits. As the wave of lawsuits against manufacturers for failure to warn wane, will such psychiatrists be next and do they risk substantial liability?
Keywords: informed consent; involuntary medication; antipsychotics; civil rights; battery; perjury
Psychiatric drugs are causing huge amounts of physical harm, including severely limited lives and early death. Tragically, this is not offset by corresponding benefits, because the ability of psychiatric drugs to successfully treat the conditions for which they are prescribed is limited. In fact, they are often counterproductive. This is particularly true of the neuroleptics, often also called by the misnomer "antipsychotics." It is also true of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants and their cousins, as well as the stimulants used to treat children and now adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In addition, these antidepressant and ADHD drugs cause people to become psychotic in a substantial percentage of cases, which often leads to misdiagnosing an underlying mental illness and results in ever-increasing doses of the stronger, more debilitating neuroleptics.
The scope of the harm is immense. It is likely the toll greatly exceeds that from Vioxx. The neuroleptics, old and new, disable many people who take them and substantially reduce life spans (Joukama et al., 2006; Straus et al., 2004; Waddington et al., 2003). Similarly, it has been reliably estimated the antidepressants have caused 23,000 suicides (Healy, 2004).
These facts are virtually never disclosed to patients, thus breaching the obligation to obtain informed consent, and often legally constituting battery. In forced drugging proceedings, psychiatrists testifying as witnesses regularly testify untruthfully, which constitutes perjury. This results in the courts being duped into forcing hundreds of thousands of unwilling people to take harmful drugs. The threat of involuntary commitment for failure to comply keeps many more taking these drugs in spite of their desire to reduce or eliminate them. People's lives are being ruined and shortened needlessly, because there are better alternatives. The legal system has not yet done much to hold psychiatrists accountable for this harm, but that may change.
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