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Legal
Protections Achieved
Rights were obtained for 95 former patients of the Lake Alice Child and Adolescent
Psychiatric Unit in New Zealand who, in the 1970s had received electroshock
�treatment� to their legs, arms and genitals, often without anesthetics.
CCHR obtained a magisterial inquiry, the damaging practice was stopped
and the �shock ward� was closed. Since 2001, $6.5 million in compensation
has been paid to dozens of these child victims.
In the 1970s in the United States, a federal regulation was passed that prohibited
psychosurgery being conducted in federal institutions on prisoners.
In 1976, the first law to protect patients against enforced electroshock and
psychosurgery was passed in California, providing informed consent before
any ECT or psychosurgery could be given, and banning the use of these
barbaric practices on children under the age of 12. The legislation became
a model law, adopted in substance by legislatures across the United States
and overseas.
A government inquiry into psychosurgery in New South Wales, Australia, in 1977
heard evidence from a nurse who had assisted in the brutal operations,
describing them as �like something out of the [Nazi] horror camps.� The
inquiry recom- mended the most stringent legislative protections against
arbitrary use of this procedure, which were implemented across the country.
Between 1979 and 1983, 30 more U.S. states had implemented laws allowing a
patient the right to refuse ECT and/or psychosurgery. In the same time
period, an additional 13 states passed laws that, while not specifically
naming psychosurgery or ECT, allowed mental patients the right to refuse
surgery or any surgical medical treatment or procedures.
In the 1980s, insulin shock was banned in several Australian states due to
the lethal effect it had on patients, which CCHR had been exposing.
In 1993, the most restrictive law to date against electroshock was passed in
Texas, raising the age limit for ECT to 16 years of age, and forcing psychiatrists
to warn their patients in writing of the potential for ECT to cause death
and/or permanent memory loss. Along with other constraints, psychiatrists
must now furnish autopsy reports on any deaths within 14 days of ECT administration.
At least 16 psychiatric facilities subsequently stopped using electroshock
in Texas.
In the 1990s, in Norway, thousands of dollars in government compensation were
secured for the country�s 500 surviving lobotomy victims, recompense for
the harm they suffered from this debilitating psychiatric procedure.
In Italy, the birthplace of ECT, the Parliament of Piedmont region responded
to CCHR�s information by unanimously voting in 1999 to ban the use of
ECT on children, the elderly and pregnant women. In Tuscany in 2002, Regional
Law # 39 was passed restricting the use of ECT and psychosurgery.
In January 2003, the National Health Board of Denmark also instituted
tighter controls over electroshock, ordering mandatory reporting of every
ECT treatment rendered to the Board.
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