Health Canada's post-market surveillance program Canada Vigilance revealed that between 2015 and 2020 there had been 2,815 deaths in Canada in which antipsychotic medication was listed as the primary suspect in causing these deaths.

According to the Institute of Safe Medication Practices Canada antipsychotics are the second most common medication involved in deaths resulting from medication incidents. The first being opioid medication.

The safety concerns of psychoactive drugs have long been noted, as the American Psychiatric Association had done a task force report in 1987 after sudden, unexpected deaths in otherwise physically healthy psychiatric patients “raised the concern that the use of psychotropics, especially antipsychotics, may be associated with an increased risk for sudden death.”

Aside from potentially life-threatening risks associated with psychoactive drugs, their side-effects can also cause severe physical and psychological distress. Several psychoactive medications contain warnings of the potential to develop Tardive Dyskinesia, an involuntary neurological movement disorder.

In 2017 the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights sited that “overmedication, including medications administered under false pretences and without disclosure of risks not only violate the right to free and informed consent, but constitute ill-treatment and may amount to torture.”  

The Psychiatric Patient Informed Consent bill, should it be passed, would make it mandatory for psychiatrists or any treating healthcare provider (HCP) prescribing psychiatric/psychotropic/psychoactive medications to have "informed consent" or “information” sessions in which they would would go through the “WARNINGS AND PRECAUTIONS” segment in the monographs of each drug they are prescribing to their patient in order to give them full and accurate details of the risks, and side-effects of the drugs they are prescribing.

Canada has signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which requires “health professionals to provide care of the same quality to persons with disabilities as to others, including on the basis of free and informed consent."

“Informed Consent” sessions are crucial for the health and safety of patients and also for fully preserving their right to free and informed consent. For example, many psychiatric drugs have warnings that the drugs have potentially lethal consequences for persons who are obese, living with hypertension, high cholesterol levels, pulmonary artery disease or poor cardiac health.

Informed Consent sessions will give patients the opportunity to fully exercise their right to consent to or refuse the proposed drugs based on the information presented to them from the “warnings and precautions” segment in the drug monographs.

While pharmaceutical companies have made information regarding risks and benefits of their drugs freely available, many psychiatric patients have never seen a monograph for any of the drugs they are taking. In lieu of this fact, Ontario's Health Care Consent Act is not being observed or made accessible to psychiatric patients when the “warnings and precautions” in drug monographs are not being disclosed.

Patients both voluntarily and involuntarily treated, as well as their caregivers or substitute decision makers, have the right to full disclosure of all possible risks, and side-effects of their psychiatric medication while medical decisions regarding their treatment are being made by their doctors or healthcare providers. Failure to do this violates patient rights to free and informed consent for those deemed to have capacity under the law, thus violating principles within the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and places the safety of both voluntary and involuntary patients in jeopardy.