VA must disclose psychiatric drug risks to veterans before treatment
S. 3314 — Written Informed Consent Act · Filed by Tim Sheehy (R-MT) · 8 cosponsors · Introduced Dec 2, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill requires the VA to expand its existing informed-consent directive for opioid therapy to cover five additional medication classes: antipsychotics, stimulants, antidepressants, anxiolytics, and narcotics. Veterans would receive written disclosure of risks, benefits, and alternatives before starting these drugs, matching the transparency standard already applied to long-term opioid pain treatment.
Why we flagged it
The bill's sole operative mechanism is a transparency mandate—requiring written informed consent for five medication classes. It is a straightforward patient-protection measure with no deregulation, subsidy, or carve-out.
What the text implies
- Expands informed-consent standard to psychiatric medications (antipsychotics, antidepressants, anxiolytics, stimulants), which may increase documentation burden on VA clinicians but strengthens veteran autonomy over mental-health treatment.
- Narcotics are included alongside opioids—the bill's language suggests narcotics may be treated as a distinct category from the opioids already covered by the 2020 directive, potentially closing a gap in pain-medication disclosure.
- No enforcement mechanism, penalty, or audit provision is stated; compliance depends on VA administrative implementation and internal oversight.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Veterans gain explicit written informed consent before receiving powerful psychiatric and pain medications, strengthening their autonomy and ability to make informed medical decisions. The bill imposes no new restrictions on veterans' access to care—only a transparency requirement on the VA.
Named in the bill
Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration, VA Directive 1005 (Informed Consent for Long-Term Opioid Therapy for Pain, May 13, 2020)
Where it stands
8 cosponsors: 8 Republicans.
- Dec 2, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Dec 2, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
2 lobbying clients named this bill on 2 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $422,741 in lobbying spend. A filing names 62 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 41% of bills with at least one filing.
Tim Sheehy, the sponsor, reported $398,825 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- American Psychological Association Services Inc.(fka American Psychological Assn — $340,000 on 1 filing
- National Council for Behavioral Health — $82,741 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 16, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (537 characters) on Oct 3, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 16, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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