Dr. Barthold Bierens de Haan of Switzerland says, “If psychiatrists don’t know what they do with their electroshocks, the patients themselves know. ...First, a considerable fear, reaching terror, they all testify; then serious memory troubles, from which they sometimes never fully recover.”

Dolphin Reeves wrote to the Los Angeles Times in 2003, calling for a full investigation into ECT use on elderly citizens: “My father had a series of three hospitalizations in New York where he underwent numerous ECTs, beginning in about the mid-1980s, then again in 1999 and in the summer of 2002. He was 90 years old when he received the last of at least 11 ECTs. I voiced my opposition, but he was nevertheless subjected to the jolts to his brain. … [He was] unable to remember where he lived, his memory was so impaired that the administering doctor decided he could not return to his home. I had expressed concern to this doctor about the possible danger of administering the shocks to my father’s brain at his age.

“The doctor assured me that there was no danger. He failed to mention the deleterious effects the electroshock would have on my father’s memory. Medicare pays for shock treatments for the elderly. I believe it is an abuse not only of the patient but of the Medicare system. I think a full investigation of the procedure and the physicians performing it should be undertaken.”

In April 2003, Carole from New Zealand detailed how she had been subjected to violent ECT in 2000. Suffering from depression after the birth of her daughter, Carole was hospitalized and prescribed a variety of drugs that didn’t help. “I would have done anything to get well,” she said. She was given 15 electroshocks. As for “consent,” she said, psychiatrists said, “I would get two weeks’ memory loss. … But I can’t remember what it was like to have my wee girl. I have lost the birth experience and what it was like to be in labor.” Carole also forgets what day it is and peoples’ names. Because of the damage she suffered from ECT, she has lost custody of her daughter.

In September 1999, a Scottish family won an $82,600 settlement from the Greater Glasgow Health Board (GGHB) over the death of 30-year-old Joseph Doherty, who committed suicide while undergoing ECT in 1992. Doherty’s medical records show that before being electroshocked, he had repeatedly refused to consent to ECT.

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