A judge gave a hospital permission to give a man 30 rounds of electroconvulsive therapy over a six-month period, over the man’s objections, and after excluding two witnesses who would have testified on the man’s behalf. The judge did that after a brief court hearing conducted over Zoom, even though shock therapy has serious side effects such as memory loss. The 30 rounds of shocks did not cure his depression. Yet judges in multiple states have issued orders forcing people to undergo shock therapy.
Last May, a judge in Minnesota rubberstamped the Mayo Clinic’s request to give David Russell 30 rounds of shocks over his objection. Reason magazine reports on Russell’s ordeal:
Russell wasn’t in court because of a crime he had committed; he was there to defend his right to refuse an invasive medical treatment….clinicians from Rochester, Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic were seeking a court order to administer electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) over Russell’s objection. If Russell lost in court, the clinicians would be granted permission to administer up to 30 rounds of ECT over a six-month span….attaching electrodes to his head, and applying approximately 120 volts of electricity for between one to six seconds, long enough to produce a brain seizure lasting around one minute.
Sometimes, doctors seek court orders to perform ECT on unwilling patients. In states like Minnesota, the procedure can be court-ordered even if patients don’t pose a danger to themselves or others. Instead, after weighing “the risks of adverse side effects compared with potential benefits to the patient,” a doctor merely needs to convince a judge that “the treatment will produce the desired effects.”
Those “adverse side effects” doctors must weigh aren’t minor and most notably include severe memory loss…one of the two ECT device makers in the U.S. discloses in its user manual that the procedure has been linked to a long list of “serious adverse events,” including but not limited to “cognition and memory impairment,” “brain injury,” and cardiac complications. “The long-term safety and effectiveness of ECT treatment,” the device maker warns, “has not been demonstrated.”…90 minutes after the hearing began [over Zoom], the judge issued her ruling: The Mayo Clinic was permitted to shock Russell up to 30 times over the following 6 months….Russell, who was ultimately forced to undergo 17 ECT sessions, subsequently developed three potentially fatal blood clots in his right arm, for which he is still undergoing treatment…he continues to experience significant gaps in his memory.
In 2008, Ray Sandford was given shocks for approximately a year after a physician he had met “only briefly” testified he should be given involuntary shock therapy, in a courtroom located in the hospital’s basement.
In Connecticut, two hospital patients were ordered by judges to receive shock therapy, such as a woman who was shocked 500 times in a five-year period. In Connecticut, hospitals “can constantly petition [for shock therapy] for years and years, and no one is going to tell you to stop. It’s a flaw in the system that doesn’t protect people,” said a patient’s lawyer.
People forced into shock therapy aren’t the only people with bad experiences in hospitals. A leading chain of psychiatric hospitals “traps” patients in their hospitals, teaching employees to use vague words slanted in favor of involuntary commitment, such as “combative”, on medical charts, while avoiding words that make commitment seem unreasonable, such as “calm” and “compliant.” “Unless the patients or their families hire lawyers,” the hospital “often holds them until their insurance runs out,” reported The New York Times. Hospital employees and government oversight bodies have chronicled instances in which multiple other psychiatric facilities have committed similarly unscrupulous acts.
