Patients in Scotland were forced to receive electric shock treatment against their will almost 1,100 times last year – prompting calls for the NHS to stop using the ‘ethically unacceptable’ procedure.
In each case, people suffering from mental illness were compelled to undergo electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) even though they objected to the treatment or actively struggled to resist it.
The World Health Organisation and United Nations recently warned that involuntary or forced ECT risked breaching patients’ human rights – and could be regarded as a form of torture.
The procedure, which sees electric currents passed through the brain to induce a brief seizure, has been used since the 1930s but remains deeply controversial.
A new report shows that ECT was carried out in the Scottish NHS more than 4,000 times last year.
Women in their 60s were most likely to receive the treatment – while the most commonly treated condition was severe depression.
In around 2,000 cases, ECT was performed on people who, because of their mental state, were deemed incapable of giving consent.
In 1,081 cases, treatment was given to patients who said they didn’t want it or fought against it – but who were over-ruled by doctors.
While health chiefs in Scotland acknowledge ECT can produce ‘adverse’ side-effects, they insist it is safe and effective.
First developed in the 1930s, the procedure was infamously portrayed in the 1975 film One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, in which Jack Nicholson plays a convicted criminal who feigns mental illness.
Hellbound and Down 