Cutting jail benzo use reduces violence

Stopping the use of certain tranquillisers in prisons and hospitals reduces the levels of violence and self-harm and helps raise health standards, according to the country’s leading forensic psychiatrist.

Harry Kennedy, head of the Central Mental Hospital, said that since they stopped prescribing the medication in their prison clinics, the suicide rates there had fallen.

He said in the CMH, the most violent patients in the State are now managed without BZDs, a group name for tranquillisers commonly known as benzos.