[D66] Your Consent is Not Required

[René Oudeweg]

robwipond.com
Your Consent is Not Required
Rob Wipond
8–10 minutes

Your Consent is Not Required

Rob Wipond2023-05-05T19:26:51+00:00

Your Consent Is Not Required: The Rise in Psychiatric Detentions, Forced 
Treatment, and Abusive Guardianships (BenBella, 2023) is now available 
in hardcover, ePub, Kindle and audiobook by order through your local 
bookstore, or at Amazon, Amazon Canada, Barnes & Noble, Chapters/Indigo, 
Audiobooks.com and elsewhere.

About Your Consent Is Not Required

Asylums are supposed to be in the past. However, though the buildings 
were closed, many of the practices lived on. In fact, more law-abiding 
Americans today are being involuntarily committed and forcibly treated 
“for their own good” than at any time in history.

In the first work of investigative journalism in decades to give a 
comprehensive view into contemporary civil psychiatric incarceration and 
forced interventions, Your Consent Is Not Required exposes how rising 
numbers of people from many walks of life are being subjected against 
their will to surveillance, indefinite detention, and powerful 
tranquilizing drugs, restraints, seclusion, and electroshock.

There’s a common misconception that, due to asylum closures, only 
“dangerous” people get committed now. But forced psychiatric 
interventions today occur in thousands of public and private hospitals, 
and also in group and long-term care facilities, troubled-teen and 
residential treatment centers, and even in people’s own homes under 
outpatient commitment orders. Intended to “help,” for many people the 
experiences are terrifying, traumatizing, and permanently damaging.

Driven partly by individuals’ genuine concerns for the “mental health” 
of others, and partly by institutions entangled with goals of power, 
profit, and social control, psychiatric coercion is increasingly used to:

     manage school children and the elderly
     quell family conflicts
     police the streets
     control people in shelters, community living, and prisons
     fraudulently increase hospital profits
     “resolve” workplace disagreements
     detain protesters and discredit whistleblowers

Thoroughly researched, with alarming true stories and hard data from the 
US and Canada, Rob Wipond’s Your Consent Is Not Required builds an 
unassailable case for greater transparency, vigilance, and change.

*****

Rob Wipond is a freelance investigative journalist who writes frequently 
about the interfaces between psychiatry, civil rights, policing, 
surveillance and privacy, and social change. His articles have been 
nominated for seventeen magazine and journalism awards for reporting on 
science, medicine, law, business, and community issues.
What People Are Saying about Your Consent Is Not Required
“…timely… eye-opening… exhaustive… powerful… Wipond’s powers as an 
investigative journalist frequently collide with, but sometimes also 
overcome, the determined stonewalling of health authorities… Wipond’s 
comprehensive study unearths health and social services replete with 
poor-to-dreadful outcomes, lax oversight, and protocols seemingly rigged 
against those most in need.”

–Christopher Lane, Psychology Today
“Deeply researched, lucidly written… an important contribution to public 
policy debate and a profoundly moving, must-read call for human dignity 
and humane treatment for all. Highly recommended.”

–Tom Sandborn, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Province, Calgary Herald
“…informative… eye-opening… Having worked as a defence lawyer 
representing ten thousand individuals embroiled in the justice system 
consequent to being diagnosed with a mental disorder over 30 years at 
the bar, I know that Wipond’s thoughtful analysis is right on all 
fronts… There has not been much, if anything of this nature available in 
print, until now… should be required reading for anyone involved in 
supporting, treating, caring for or representing persons living with 
serious mental health issues.”

–Anita Szigeti, Law360 Canada
“…a comprehensive and authoritative report on unwanted psychiatric 
interventions in North America… a fabulous, albeit frightening, analysis 
of the myriad ways people are forced to endure unwanted psychiatric 
interventions, from civil commitment and forced drugging to the way 
employers and schools also force people, to guardianships and the 
surveillance of social media.”

–Jim Gottstein, author of The Zyprexa Papers and
founder of the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights
“A hugely important investigation of psychiatry’s ‘extra-legal’ policing 
of people who have done nothing illegal but who create tension for their 
families or society… A vivid picture of an injustice ignored by the 
mainstream media.”

–Bruce E. Levine, psychologist and author of A Profession Without Reason
and Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic
“A timely, well-researched and comprehensive exposé of one of the least 
visible epidemics in the US: legalized force, segregation and – all too 
often — incapacitation in the name of psychiatric help.”

–Peter Stastny MD, psychiatrist, co-author The Lives They Left Behind
and co-editor Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry
“Your Consent Is Not Required examines a problem that gets far too 
little attention: the detention and forced treatment of people under 
civil mental health laws. Rob Wipond’s exposé is passionate, thoroughly 
reported and rigorously reasoned. This book grabbed my attention from 
the start and never let go.”

–John Horgan, Scientific American columnist, author of Mind-Body Problems,
and director of the Stevens Institute of Technology Center for Science 
Writings
“In the consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement, for years we’ve fought 
against involuntary psychiatric treatments and strived for 
self-determination and autonomy. Featuring the stories of a wide range 
of psychiatric survivors, from children and seniors to Black veterans 
and white medical professionals, Your Consent Is Not Required is a vital 
contribution to discussions of the economics, politics, structural 
racism, and weak science behind this country’s expanding systems of 
forced psychiatry. And everyone should hear well its warning: This could 
happen to you.”

—Celia Brown, board president of MindFreedom International and founder of
Surviving Race: The Intersection of Injustice, Disability and Human Rights
“We exposed many serious, ongoing problems at a major mental health 
facility in Colorado that ultimately led to the facility being shut 
down. This ground-breaking book shows that these problems are 
frighteningly common and nationwide, indeed continent-wide, in scope. 
Wipond also provides vital information and insights about the risks of 
involuntary psychiatric detention that everyone should know before 
voluntarily entering the mental health system.”

–Tony Kovaleski, Emmy and duPont Columbia Award-winning
Chief Investigative Reporter, ABC News Denver7
“A much-needed investigation that reveals the shocking extent of 
psychiatric coercion in our society: How well-intentioned 911 callers, 
suicide hotline volunteers, police and private security guards, school 
teachers, housing managers, social workers, and others funnel people 
toward unwanted ‘treatment’ that more often oppresses than helps them.”

—Dr. Bren LeFrançois, professor at Memorial University
School of Social Work and coeditor of Mad Matters
“As someone who identifies as a former patient and survivor of 
involuntary psychiatry, and now works as a lawyer representing people in 
inpatient psychiatric facilities, many of the experiences shared in this 
book were, disturbingly, all too familiar. Still, I could not put this 
book down. From revelations about the true numbers of inpatient beds to 
stories of psychiatric retaliation against whistleblowers, it’s full of 
important and sometimes frightening insights, and should be required 
reading for everyone working in human rights and mental health.”

–Kathy Flaherty, Executive Director, Connecticut Legal Rights Project
Share This Page, Choose Your Platform!