Yes They Can Still Force Electroshock Therapy

My preceptor in Kansas taught me — while I was finishing my training and in my psychopharmacology fellowship — how to do “ECT”, which stands for “Electroconvulsive therapy.”

AKA: Electroshock therapy

He told me it had a long history. He knew how compulsively I read the literature, so he told me all that I really had to know was summarized in the “User’s Guide” for the “little black box” that administered the electricity to the patient’s skull, telling me it was “safer than ever” because of advances in anesthesia. Besides, insurance considered it a “procedure,” just as surgeons did surgery, so I would make some extra money which could only “help me through life.”

I flashed back to when my mother seemed close-lipped when I asked her what her mother was like. It was my “Bobie,” my father’s mother of blessed memory, who told me, when I was 6 or 7 or so (In Yiddish aka Judaeo-German language) that my mother thought I was stupid and too little to understand things, like that my grandmother on the other side “got the electric” and “died in a crazy house.”

I immediately ran to my mother, who was upstairs doing laundry, who cried loudly and broke into a stream of tears, shouting she “didn’t want me to find out that way,” as if the way I found out made any difference.

“So she was sick or something and probably needed it.” I tried to comfort her by stroking her but it didn’t seem to do much good.

I did learn she had received it at “Northampton,” the Massachusetts State Hospital.

I never much got involved with State psychiatric hospitals or the clinical problems of patients who required that level of care. I always felt more comfortable with patients whom I could get involved with the mainstresm of society. People I could return, (even if they needed a little time off) to running or working in businesses or running households.

I have read over and over again that human rights violations are rampant in mental health. After the article I cited at the beginning of this article, I could not help but wonder if state hospitals are the place to (at least) start to look.

From that article alone, it seems hard to believe that a patient who is competent to question the need for electroshock therapy in their case really needs it, although all we have access to here is the lawyer’s case evaluation. I did wonder if this could happen in California.  Somehow I want to believe we have “evolved” more than Connecticut.

As far as I can figure out, it COULD happen here. This booklet (clicking this link opens or downloads a PDF file which can be read with the free Adobe Acrobat reader) summarizes the rights of mental health patients in California. Page 16 says that “If a court has determined you lack the capacity” you can be made to take ECT.

This booklet has several errors of omission, like who makes sure the ECT is the best and the safest treatment??? As far as I can figure, it is any doctor (a psychiatrist?) who reads the insert with the “electric box.”

TMS or “transcranial electrical stimulation” works about 70% of the time and is often given to pregnant women because of its safety profile.

Do the courts know about this???

The “definition of terms on page 28 includes this:

“Antipsychotic Medication: Any medication that is customarily prescribed for the treatment of mental disorders, emotional disorders, or both.”

WRONG

Antipsychotic medications are given for “psychosis.” which means seeing or hearing things that aren’t there. If someone is suicidal, giving antidepressants, a different kind of medicine, can help more.

Not to mention finding out why they are suicidal; they may be trapped or threatened.

Be very afraid . I have learned to love lawyers.

Wherever you are, call the local (county) bar (lawyers’) association.

In California, the county Bar Associations to whom my patients have called offer a free consultation. The lawyers who interest themselves in these matters seem to be truly dedicated.

Take action. I can’t even tell if the courts know ECT can cause memory loss and even some permanent brain damage, the way that (uncontrolled) seizures can. Risks can be minimized, but not totally removed.

Be afraid.

Get a lawyer on your side.