Ongoing until April 1st: The World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day organization (W-BAD) is asking ALL Massachusetts residents to write their legislators and ask them to co-sign The Benzo Bill, HD.285/ SD.1370, informed consent legislation regarding benzodiazepine use. See the flyer for more information, a pre-written template you can use to email your local state representative and state senator encouraging them to support the Bill, and a link to read the Bill.
For some reason my web browser wouldn’t open the legislation text. My concern is how do you enforce informed consent and is the informed consent actually informed consent. Psychiatrists can just say, “benzos can have negative cognitive, physical and mental effects but you have a disease like diabetes. Your chemical imbalance means this drug is evidence based.”
The idea that a group who has been lying about the drugs they sell for decades will actually provide real informed consent by themselves sounds naive. Serotonin drugs have had a black box warning that they increase suicide for over a decade. Telling people this black box warning hasn’t worked because psychiatry surrounds the warning with dishonesty about how the drug fixes an imbalance, is needed and you’ll be sick forever if you don’t take it. It is similar to a 12 page user agreement pretending that hiding something in obscure language on page 8 paragraph 3 means people understand it.
While supporting the bill is arguably a no-brainer, these “informed consent” conversations always beg the question, if someone is “fully informed” about the nature and dangers of psych drugs and nevertheless “consents,” doesn’t this constitute a knowingly self-destructive act? Isn’t this counter to the professed values of psychiatry?
