Shock treatment

Press, 11 April 1977, Page 10

Shock treatment

Sir, —I write as one who has involuntarily received shock treatment on two different occasions. I felt no benefit from it and no relief from my depressive symptoms. The experience was horrifying and will never be forgotten. I have been a committed patient in a North Inland psychiatric hospital and could show you patients there who will, for the rest of their lives, bear marked skin as a direct restdt of the constant use of ECT. Shock treatment is used as a deterrent, and the threat of its use is a regular ploy of some of the nursing staff, as is incarceration in the maximum security wards To those who commend ECT as a useful and harmless psychiatric tool, 1 would recommend a stay in the recovery room after “treatment.” I would stand as a witness against the abhorrent practice at the inquiry into its use, which should be set up at once.— Yours, etc., MENS SANA. April 6, 1977. [Dr John Dobson, chairman of the New Zealand committee of The Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, replies: “I am sad that Mens Sana recalls his treatment as being so un-

pleasant. The use of ECT when the patient is unwilling, but the psychiatrist considers it essential, places a very heavy responsibility on skilled judgment. ECT should not mark the skin, nor be used as a threat. If Mens Sana will contact me personally and give more details I will do what I can to remedy the problem l.e describes.”]

Sir, —Your account of the Samoan man who died soon after receiving shock treatment at Porirua Hospital is perhaps the most gruesome of the recent cases of shock treatment that have come to the public’s attention. The barbaric nature of this socalled “treatment” is cause for deep public disquiet as evidenced by the flood of letters condemning it in your paper. There was a time when New Zealand led the world in social reform and we were admired for it. Today. when most Western countries have banned ECT we still persist with it. Even the Russians use it now only on their dissidents. We must all think twice before donating to the Telethon later this year when the Mental Health begging bowl is rattled before us for still more funds for this kind of result. —Yours, etc., DAVID BATH. April 6, 1977.

[We have been unable to confirm that any Western country has banned ECT. In many countries, however, its use has been reduced in recent years, partly be- - cause alternative treatments have been discovered, and partly because—as in some states of the United States of America—changes have been made in the law on the custodial care of patients.—Editor]

Sir,—Perhaps a passivity princiole for patients could be formulated: The doctor is always right. Andrew Dennis (“The Press,” April 6) observed that there are fundamental moral and ethical dimensions to most medical treatments including ECT. I deplore the trend of the medical profession to treat patients as passive, fallible beings—forgetting that doctors, too, share in human fallibility. Valliant, an eminent, psychiatrist, wrote recently “Nobody is absolutely healthy or sick, but how individuals maintain the dynamic balance among the conflicting elements of their personality will determine whether they are perceived as sick or well.” Sickness and health should prooerly be defined by all responsible members of society, not just experts.— Yours, etc., A. D. HOLMES. April 7, 1977.