Shock treatment produces argument and some shock answers

Press, 24 May 1977, Page 19

Shock treatment produces argument and some shock answers

The spotlight is once again on electro-convulsive therapy (E.C.T.), commonly known as shock treatment. Claims that the E.C.T. machine at Lake Alice psychiatric hospital has been used to give shocks as a form of punishment have prompted the Department of Health to investigate. Nearer home, the pros and cons of E.C.T. were recently discussed in letters to “The Press.” JENNIFER HAMILTON looks at the debate in a series of three articles.

The controversy over the use of electroconvulsive therapy and, indeed, of any treatment involving the mind has produced many emotional reactions — both for and against — but no neat answer. Those who support its use. like Dr John Dobson, a Christchurch psychiatrist and chairman of the New Zealand committee, Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, said that E.C.T. is quick, effective and humane. Mr Fraser Sloane, on the other hand, who was a psychiatric student nurse at Sunnyside, said that it would be better to die than be subjected to E.C.T. The issue will closely affect many people, as one

in eight New Zealanders can expect to receive some sort of psychiatric treatment in their lifetime. The whole area of mental illness and its treatment is clouded by age-old notions and prejudices. “For centuries madness has been looked on as some sort of divine punishment on yourself and your forebears,” said the superintendent of Sunnyside Hospital (Dr T. Edwin Hall). “This idea was fostered by syphilis, which damaged the mind and could not be cured until this century. About 20 per cent of all admissions to psychiatric hospitals used to suffer from tertiary syphilis,” he said. In Christchurch the first mentally sick people were

locked in the Lyttelton jail and looked after by Constable Edward Seager. When a small mental hospital was built at the site of Sunnyside Hospital he became the first nonmedical superintendent there. Doctor Dobson said that when he began his work in a mental hospital resources and staff were so critically short that he was responsible for 900 patients. He said that he worked in Carrington and Seacliff hospitals about the same time that Janet Frame described in her book “Faces in the Water” and he agrees her descriptions were authentic. Books like “Faces in the Water’” and the film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s

Nest” could influence people’s views about E.C.T. and mental illness — although the events are set in past decades. Some people object on the ground that no-one still really knows how E.C.T. works. Others, like a Canterbury law lecturer, Andrew Dennis see E.C.T. as ar, assault on the brain (in the. legal sense). An article in the “British Medical Journal” said: “Hostility to E.C.T. is a varied prominence. Some people — patients, doctors, and members of other professions concerned — regard it as crude, old-fashioned, outdated, of a piece with asylums, locked wards and padded rooms.” Similar attitudes to mental illness and hospi-

tals are common in Christchurch. Some people are even frightened to walk though Sunnyside Hospital, and look for the iron bars, said Dr Hall. Those who have recovered from depression and other mental illnesses say that the stigma against mental disorder is disappearing but they are still occasionally treated as if they had an untouchable disease. “It was as though I’d been in a leper colony,” said one former patient. “People would look at me with great concern and ask: ‘How are you?’ I felt like saying: ‘l’ve done something you haven’t done. I’ve been round the twist and back again’.” Another woman who

has recently been treated said that she felt embarrassed at first about having the treatment and worrid what her colleagues thought. “There is still prejudice towards patients who require E.C.T.,” she said. Judith, a 24-year-old woman who recovered after having E.C.T. said that when she went looking for a job she was quite open about the fact that she had been treated for depression. Although she was qualified as a graphic artist no-one would give har a job. In later interviews she said she had been selfemployed to account for the two years she was not working. She now has her old job back — with the assistance of the Labour Department.