(This is part one because of some other stuff about institutionalization and its discontents that I want to comment on after I expel some more mucus. It needs a response, but I want to get this out first. I’ll just state briefly here that while this is a horrific practice in and of itself, it’s not all that deserves condemnation.)
You know that cliche about how ignorance is bliss? Well, privilege is ignorance. Because I do not live with a disability, I can remain oblivious–for now, anyway–to the discrimination people with disabilities face. When I walk to the subway station, I don’t have to keep track of the curb cuts. When I get off at my subway stop, I don’t have to think about whether or not the elevator’s working. When I use the bathroom, I don’t have to notice whether the guy ahead of me in line uses the handicapped stall or the smaller one, because I can take whichever one is left over. Anti-discrimination laws defeated? Hate crimes on the rise? Social support systems facing budget cuts? Not my problem!
And because of my privilege, I did not know about this:
(not sure how to sort out the triggers here, so I’ll just go with very disturbing.)
Israel [director of the Behavioral Research Institute] said he was considering employing his harshest punishment, an electrical shock device known as the Self-Injurious Behavior Inhibiting System, or SIBIS, that would require a court’s permission to use.
SIBIS was invented to stop such behavior as hair pulling and head banging exhibited by an estimated 160,000 people with retardation or autism. A band of electronic sensors is wrapped around a user’s head. When the device detects sudden motion, like that of the head being hit, it sends a mild electric shock through the wearer’s body. The sensation is described as feeling like a hard snap of a rubber band. This negative reinforcement is supposed to teach people not to hit themselves.
Some professionals, like Israel, argue that SIBIS is a useful and humane tool of last resort to stop people like Janine [an autistic child] from hurting themselves. Others, like Tom Nerney, the former director of the American Autism Society, have fought for state bans on SIBIS, which he calls a crude and ineffective “torture.” Instead, he points to nonaversive programs such as CSAAC to prove that there are humane, effective options.
A scientific panel brought together by the National Institutes of Health backed the use of such aversive devices in 1989. Nerney called the NIH process flawed, noting that some conference members were scientists who had helped develop SIBIS or whose universities had a financial interest in it. Dr. Duane Alexander of NIH, for example, was an unpaid member of the scientific advisory board to the American Foundation for Autistic Children, whose founders, Leslie and Mooza Grant, invented SIBIS. Despite the objections of Nerney and others, SIBIS has been slowly winning acceptance by psychologists and educators around the country, even being sold directly to school districts to use on children with autist or retardation.
BRI would come to rely heavily on SIBIS. Only a few students were considered candidates for being shocked when I met Janine [in 1989]. Three years later, in the summer of 1992, SIBIS was used on at least forty-two of BRI’s approximately sixty-three students. Dependence on the shock device drew the institution into a soaring spiral of punishments. The initial benefits soon faded as students adapted to the shocks and Israel debated how to make the punishment effective again. He considered a new generation of the shock device that delivered three times the electrical jolt. But Dr. Ogden Lindsley, the chairman of BRI’s senior peer review board, scoffed at that as too soft and “a blueprint for adaptation” once again by the students. Lindsley’s advice to Israel was to up the pain threshold so dramatically that once shocked the student would truly be deterred from acting out again. “You should punish maximumly to get rid of the ongoing behavior,” Lindsley explained. “These kids are case-hardened. We need something different.”
No Pity, Joseph Shapiro
1992. What else happened in 1992? Well, Bill Clinton ran for election for the first time. Melrose Place premiered. So did the new incarnation of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno as host. Silence of the Lambs won the Oscar for Best Picture. 1992 was the year of the LA riots, and the year of Hurricane Andrew.
Doesn’t seem that long ago, does it?
1992 was also fourteen years and counting before this practice was abolished. Yup, it’s still going on:
At first glance, the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Massachusetts, looks like something out of Disneyland. It’s a kind of magical place, with plush rooms and lots of games and adventures for the students. But it is also the only place in the country that uses aversion shock therapy on its students — some of whom are as young as six years old.
The center was founded by Dr. Matthew Israel, who designed a shock device called a GED, or gradual electronic decelerator. The students, who have few options when it comes to schooling due to behavioral issues or mental disabilities, wear up to five electrodes at a time strapped to their arms and legs. The gadget itself is housed in a fanny pack worn by the student. If a student acts out or becomes violent with staff members, the student gets a two second shock to the skin.
Given the picture of Israel painted in No Pity, and given everything I’ve read from people who have been in institutions, it’s extremely unlikely that “acting out”–or “violent with staff members”–is a narrow category defined without prejudice. And–surprise!–it’s not like a slap on the wrist.
When I went to the center to interview Dr. Israel, I tried the aversion shock device to gauge its power. I put one electrode on my arm and shocked myself using a remote control. I had been told by the center’s employees that it feels like a bee sting or a pin prick. Let me tell you, it hurt far worse than that. Two seconds felt like two minutes. It was like a parade of pins stabbing me in the arm. I could see why students would alter their behavior after feeling that sensation.
Or why it could be called torture, and those students torture victims. Or why they would react like abused children react.
The comments are pretty nauseating. If the CNN blog is any indication, a lot of people are very much in favor of driving pins into the arms of children. This one was depressing as hell:
that is absurd how could you hurt us (im 13) like that, and besides in my opinon punishment doesnt work period. no matter what the surcumstance , electric shock treatment is one of the most inhumane and barbaric this a person could to to us
In comments to an earlier post, ballastexistenz said this:
But, the point that I just went on a bunch of rambles about, is that it’s possible, even unconsciously, to make it “worse” to be locked up and mistreated for being gender-variant, or pregnant, or a lesbian, than for being disabled or in some category that is currently labeled “mental illness”. And it’s also possible to be afraid to describe what happened to you or people you know in the name of some “real” disability, and thus reach for the examples that more people would agree are ludicrous. (I sometimes am afraid, myself, to discuss certain things that are done to us, as disabled people, because so often the expected but painful slap I get is something on the order of “But if it’s for that, it’s okay.”)
That kind of thinking is very much on display in the comments thread on the CNN blog. I get the sense–maybe it’s wishful thinking?–that the commenters don’t abuse their children and don’t like to see the children they know and love abused. They would probably be horrified to learn that their neighbors were hurting their children in this or similar ways. My children, our children, normal children, good children, successful children, white children don’t deserve that kind of treatment. Those children, sick children, crazy children, autistic children, ADHD children, black children, poor children, problem children, “bad kids,” “severe behavioral cases,” “at-risk children,” “troubled children,” obviously do. For those children, the ends justify the means. For those children, success is determined by how quiet they are. For those children, kindness is weakness. For those children, torture is good. A lot of the commenters draw the line this way:
As a last resort for problem students, it absolutely should be used. Traditional schooling just cannot work for some severe behavioral cases. I realize that it sounds horrible, but in all honesty, this has a proven case history behind it- shock collars for dogs. The human animal isn’t that far different.
Why -shouldn’t- it be used? I cannot think of a single reason. For these kids, this is a last resort. If they aren’t rehabilitated by whatever means necessary, society will be forced to deal with them later- when the problem is far too set it. Take care of the problem, however you can, while they are young. Fix the problem now, before these kids are out of control 20 year olds, or 30 year olds, committing real crimes.
One of them, creepier and creepier, draws it between children and adults:
this is a last resort method, and unlike adults, children will respond and learn from it.
Oh, and here’s the one willing to make it all explicit:
I suspect that those who have the opinion that it is somehow the fault of the parents that these children are the way they are, have never actually experienced someone with a violent mental illness. I don’t think anyone here is advocating that we do this to all children, heavens no, but rather for children who have gone through the entire system of psychotherapy and this is used as a last resort. I grew up with a brother who suffers from mental illness and have a family member with severe schizphrenia, trust me when I say that neither of these people are a result of what their parents did to them, these are mental illnesses. If mild shock thereapy works for these children and does not keep them in a drug induced stupor then I say apply it where necessary by a trained professional. If you’ve never experienced mental illness in your family and all the pain that it entails you have no possible idea what it is like and what steps you might take to help that person.
Did I miss something in there? Why are we upset at the 13 year old who said it was barbaric?
Oh, no, no–just that he was one of the only people in the damn comments thread who used the word “us.” It didn’t bother me that he complained about the practice. It depressed me to witness a thirteen-year-old learning that some people like him get treated this way, and that CNN–and at least some of its audience–did not think that the wrongness of this was a settled question.
autistic children, ADHD children, black children
what has race have to do with the appropriateness/inappropriateness of aversion/shock therapy?
Don’t clutter a serious question with such silliness.
The problem with any “magic cure” as this GED thing is touted, is that it is rarely confined to the handful of individuals who may, indeed, draw value from it. It becomes “easy” as a managment tool and human beings aren’t necessarily ‘evil’ as they want to look for the quick and easy way out.
The public at large is much more away of the scandal of Ritalin and how public school administrators have forced parents (usually of boys) to either drug their child or leave the school. It’s SO much easier for public school teachers to drug the wiggleworms into a near stupor than having to actually, you know, deal with them. Certainly it seems that this GED is a variation of the same theme.
Certainly, some children NEED Ritalin (in combination with therapy) … I have a stepson with ADHD. But not usually in the quantity and frequency that some would have. All the adults in his life were dedicated to helping him acquire the skills to recognize his disability and thus, wean him off Ritalin (that happened a couple years ago).
Drugging is easy, shock therapy is easy… and easy is too tempting for those who don’t have a personal interest in the individual child.
You forgot to chastise me for making a frivolous allusion to class. Or did that not bother you, for whatever reason?
Given that at least several of the commenters immediately argued that this kid with ADHD would become a “criminal” or a “thug,” rather than arguing that he would need to stay in an institution, do you really think that race was not an issue in this story? Do you think that it is not an issue in the way a child’s disability is managed, or in which children get labeled “problem children” and “bad kids?” There’s nothing silly about pointing that disparity out.
“Don’t clutter a serious question with such silliness.”
Uh? What? What?
Having spent time in the hospital when i was a kid…i can tell you exactly what kinds of children are most likely to be classified as having “severe behavioral problems.” Which kids are percieved to be dangerous or out of control.
And it ain’t little Johnny Go Whitely from the burbs. Mental illness, like everything else in this society, is racialized and classed by the lack of resources, cultural stress, and economic conditions imposed by persons of priviledge.
I stayed a couple days on a volentary admit, and refused medicine when i wanted to.
My friends were looking at being sent to long term facilities, had been made wards of the state, and had nobody to back them up if they felt like the side effects of their medicine.
most of them weren’t sicker than I…or they wouldn’t have been if they had access to the care and resources i had.
Race is never a silly question in American life, and it sure as hell isn’t when it comes to health care.
I’d apologize for ranting on you, but damn….
That was just straight up ignorant.
Given that at least several of the commenters immediately argued that this kid with ADHD would become a “criminal” or a “thug,” rather than arguing that he would need to stay in an institution, do you really think that race was not an issue in this story?
Wait. Not one commenter mentioned race and is YOU are equating criminal with race?????
Maybe you’d like to rethink that.
The commenters — even the ones IMO who are wrong about supporting the shock therapy — are concerned with behavior and its long term consequences. They think “out of control now, out of control later, criminal acts”. I reject all simplistic “cure alls” that make it easy for administrators, teachers, doctors, to merely manage behavior rather than deal with it. For ANY child with ADHD, ADD, mental illness, bi-polar, autism, etc.
The mind truly boggles. Piny’s point is that generally people don’t call white kids “thugs” or “criminals” (Although, I’m sure you could make that case when said kids fit nicely into some skinhead stereotype.) Thug is a word meant to connote black, just like welfare queen. It’s implicit in the comment.
Piny’s point is that generally people don’t call white kids “thugs” or “criminals”
wha….???
I don’t know where you live, but “thug” and “criminal” are racially neutral words. One can actually be a “thug” without being a “criminal” because it is used to denoted overbearing BULLYING behavior!
Good lord. Shades of the “niggardly” kerfuffle.
I don’t know where you live, but “thug” and “criminal” are racially neutral words.
Darleen, I don’t know where you live, but where I live – reality – that’s a bunch of horseshit.
Darleen lives in conservative la la land. You know: the place where teachers force children to take drugs because teachers are just lazy, evil people who don’t like dealing with “wiggleworms.” The place where parents give their kids ritalin because they’re lazy, bad parents, unless they happen to be parents whom Darleen knows and loves, in which case they’re different. The place where it’s more important to discuss whether people are falsely claiming that a word is racially loaded than it is to discuss whether people are torturing children.
Can we please not let Darleen derail the discussion?
Surely you remember the looting/looking for food pictures from New Orleans?
Auguste
Since when is thug=race? Do you have an etymology source to link? Did that commenter say anything besides the word “thug” itself to lead you to conclude the commenter’s intent was to make a racist comment?
Or is this a case of projecting one’s own meaning on someone else’s words with no connection to the author’s intent?
This is just pc silliness!! CHILDREN… hello? you know…children?.. whose behavior some adults find “difficult” should NOT be “managed” – via shock or drugs – for the adults’ convenience. The worry about whether out-of-control behavior as a child MAY lead to aggressive, bullying, thuggish or criminal behavior, while real, is sorely misplaced.
hey Sally
You have a child with ADHD? A child who is mentally challenged? Or ANY child that has gone through public schools?
Then don’t try to tell me about me.
And I’m not the one derailing a discussion with spurious comments that people are in favor of torturing kids because of their race.
Peter R. Breggin, M.D.,Director,
International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology
So much for “la la conservative land”. Notice how much Breggin’s testimony against Ritalin parallels Tom Nerney’s campaign against shock therapy.
First of all, what does conservative-vs-liberal have to do with what the words “criminal” and “thug” mean? I also don’t associate either of those with race and it has nothing to do with my politics. Instead of just demanding that everyone understand words the way you do, offer some evidence that “criminal” and “thug” are racially charged.
I just did a search at cnn.com for “criminal” and “thug”. The first five hits show articles about Zacarias Moussaoui, a street gang with members “from El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala”, insurgents in Iraq, Tookie Williams, & Duke Cunningham.
Darleen, as a person with ADHD and a person who works with low-income kids with behavioral disorders, you are full of shit.
::shudder:: My mom works near that hell hole. My soul weeps whenever I see a want ad for that place.
That’s not the point I was making, sweetie, but I’ll let everyone else answer for themselves.
Lauren
Shit about what? Are you saying that Ritalin hasn’t been abused? You don’t think this article about shock therapy to “control” behavior for the benefit of ADULTS, not the kids themselves, is not similar to the Ritalin question?
This has not a thing to do with race or politics!
David
For some people “the personal is the political” and non-leftists are always suspect.
Notice how this is about “institutions” and shock therapy being used and the argument over whether it is/is not appropriate — with a few allusions that some of it may be racially motivated…ooooo!!
But let lalaland me bring up the parallel to the abuse of Ritalin in the INSTITUTION of public schools and suddenly..well, I have to be full of shit. At this point the children become secondary to scoring correct political points.
If you think the majority of medications prescribed to kids are for the parents’ benefit, you live a sheltered middle-class life. This doesn’t have to do with race, necessarily, but has everything to do with class and class politics.
You are accusing the parents of children on medication of being bad parents, bad teachers, and negligent caregivers. Unless they are your kids. In which case medication is totally okay and necessary.
I think you’re awfully quick to jump on the anti-medication bandwagon instead of actually looking at the content in the post which deals with torturing children.
Aim your discontent at the fuckwit doctors who think this is a fantastic idea, and push it on parents who are at their wits’ end with out of control, distressed children.
Which just so happens to support piny’s thesis.
Darleen, I swear its like you’ve got blinders on. One more time: the reality (which you may not like to admit but its true) is that more people associate thugish behavior with minorites. As a result, minority children will be disporpotionately impacted by this procedure. I really don’t understand your disconnect here. “Thug” and “criminal” may techincally be “neutral” words but when people think of who those words represent, they’re not thinking white kids- any episode of law and order or some other criminal drama should show you that…..
Lauren
Where the hell am I blaming parents? I’d be blaming then both my husband, his ex, his parents, ME because Ritalin was part PART of the therapy my stepson took for his ADHD.
But Ritalin is NOT A CURE. It is a tool to facilitate other therapy that gives coping strategies. My daughter Erin is a hypersensitive with learning disabilities. I was lucky to catch it in 3rd grade and exclusively treat her with physical therapy plus training her in strategies to manage her anxieties.
My husbands’ late uncle and aunt adopted and raised six developmentally and physcially challenged children. They did it with MINIMAL pharmacology.
I don’t blame parents, at wits’ end, to grasp at a “cure” that a doctor hands ‘em..especially if school administrators are also pressuring them.
I DO blame the institutions for sucking more and more children into the designation of “needs meds” for their own convenience.
Sydney
I don’t watch commerical tv. Iron Chef or Curb Appeal or Battlestar Galactica, but none of the Law&Order stuff.
more people associate thugish behavior with minorites. As a result, minority children will be disporpotionately impacted by this procedure
Then I would expect we’d see a preview of that where it concerns the prescription of Ritalin, right?
Bottom line, is that this so-called shock “cure” is touted as controlling behavior rather than the “institution” taking the hard path of dealing with the behavior with education, therapy and strategies.
Wrong wrong wrong
Fantastic. I’ll ignore your insistence that it’s the school’s fault.
Since we are all in agreement about medication as one tool in mental healthcare, we can get back to THE ACTUAL DISCUSSION AT HAND.
Fair enough. Now, how many of those people are white? Or was that the point you were trying to make?
And although Duke Cunningham is white, the article itself refers to a “political thug.”
The qualifier makes all the difference.
FWIW, since this is my particular bailiwick, a search for “thug” on michellemalkin.com turns up exactly one reference on the first page of results to a person of indeterminate race, and that’s qualified by “union thug.”
All thugs referred to in pages 2 and 3 of results are also people of color, except when Malkin quotes Dershowitz on William Rehnquist, an also-qualified “Republican thug.”
Note, too, that these results include both Malkin’s writing and that of her commenters. If you think this is an isolated circumstance, you’re crazy.
Sorry to assist in the derailment, piny.
Darleen:
Given that at least several of the commenters immediately argued that this kid with ADHD would become a “criminal” or a “thug,” rather than arguing that he would need to stay in an institution, do you really think that race was not an issue in this story?
My reading of that was more along the lines of, kids with ADHD who the commentors would be worried about being “criminals” or “thugs” and not staying in an institution are NOT going to be kids with rich families, as most such kids with rich families would end up in an institution, which tends to be – from my limited knowledge of the topic – rather expensive. That, obviously, would bring in the issue of class, which often manages to drag in race all by its lonesome, and not without justification, no?
Anyway.
The response of the commenter who argued that this could be used on children but not adults seems to be pointing out the rather serious matter that if this were done to adults, especially “normal” adults, it would be seen as torture by everyone involved, whether they dodged the issue with euphemisms or not – so I’m not entirely sure why it isn’t so for children – in ALL cases. And while people do argue the “benefits” of torture for gathering information or whatever else they want to argue for it with, in such discussions it generally at least bears a name harsher than “cure”…
On the real topic, there are public institutions(the one in Memphis, which I interned at for a summer, was overcrowded, mostly black, and one defining memory of it was when we walked down the street and a man newly released from there was skipping down the street talking crazy to us) and private institutions and race and class detrimine who goes where. We could of course, strengthen support for those with mental health issues, so fewer have to be institutionalized, and also try to work with less torturous means of behavior modification, but that’d be too obvious.
And yea, medication helps some people with ADD and ADHD and sometimes it is overprescribed, so we should work on the people who need meds, getting them, and being able to be compliant.
The article mentions schizophrenia.
As a schizophrenic, I’m all too intimately aware of what a schizophrenic having a psychotic break experiences. Reality and the inside of your head get all muddled up and you can’t distinguish between them. The nasty shit bouncing around your cranium seems to show up in the real world. Everything is terrifying, threatening, trying to hurt you. People become enemies plotting against you, trying to trick you or talk you into doing things that will ultimately destroy you. The most debilitating part is the absolute fear, and the fact that everything going on to you or around you ties back into that all consuming dread and fixation.
Yeah, sometimes you lash out at people, but it’s not because you’re being “difficult”. It’s because you’re afraid.. no, because you KNOW… that those people are trying to hurt you, or kill you, or do horrible things to you. I’ve been completely convinced, and terrified to the point of being unable to move, that people I’ve never met before are somehow my enemies. The sushi lady was trying to poison me. The man with the briefcase was working for my abusive husband, following me so that my husband could beat and rape me again. The nurse who was trying to sedate me so I didn’t cut myself to ribbons was really trying to give me something that would paralyse me, leaving me open to violation and abuse by Those People who were Out To Get Me.
To suggest that the best way to deal with someone in that mental space is to administer a severe shock? To essentially PROVIDE the physical proof that their delusions are real, that the people they perceive as out to get them or hurt them really ARE prepared to do them physical injury? And to not only do this to people who are in that state of being literally crippled by fear but to CHILDREN? I was an adult when my illness emerged, but I have no hesitation in believing that a schizophrenic child would have even less of a grasp of what was real and what wasn’t, what was a serious risk to them and what was delusion.
This is not just torture, it’s torture that plays into the mess going on in a mentally ill person’s head that these “professionals” are supposed to be trying to help them deal with. My guess is that the only reason this achieves anything is because the fear of physical pain gets tied into the delusion. I still don’t walk on grates in the pavement, even when I’m medicated. I’m too scared. These kids might be too scared to act out to certain people, but it doesn’t mean they’re any healthier.
I feel ill just thinking about it.
Jill, my point was that “thug” and “criminal” aren’t race-specific, hence the variety of ethnicity and nationality in that small group.
Auguste, I think Cunningham is refered to as a “political thug”, not because he’s white, but because “thug” usually connotes violence. Dictionary.com defines “thug” as “an aggressive and violent young criminal [syn: hood, hoodlum, goon, punk, tough, toughie, strong-armer]“
If talking about race and mental illness, especially in terms of inadequate or innapropriate treatment, I think it’s better to go deeper than just the words ‘thug’ etc. (although I agree with the point that it can be a racially loaded word)
For instance, in my psych text book, which I would quote directly but don’t feel like running upstairs, it mentions that not only are minorities more likely to come from populations more at-risk for mental illness (the poor, drug users, etc) but they are more likely to be misdiagnosed and over-medicated.
So when piny mentions ‘crazy children, poor children, problem children’ the phrase ‘black children’ sadly fits right in.
No, but I was a child with ADD. And I’m not sure why you thought I was asking for your credentials.
Has anyone actually looked at the Judge Rotenberg Center’s website? There’s some scary shit there. For instance:
Oh, and here’s what they do to you if you really fuck up:
And there’s more! The JRC also uses starvation to punish recalcitrant patients. They calculate how many calories each child needs, and they guarantee that the child will get 20% of his or her caloric needs every day. Everything above that, the kid has to earn through good behavior.
Well, of course! That makes perfect sense! Because it’s not like people with mental illness often have issues with food and eating, or that mentally ill persons going through extended manic episodes often become malnourished!
This is absolutely horrific.
Btw, if you want the etymology of the word “Thug”, it comes from “Thuggee”, an ancient cult in India that was destroyed by the British colonizers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee
I found this idea of “treatment” to be terrible. However, I do have to disagree with pretty much everyone who says minorities always get the short end of the stick in mental illness treatment. I have found exactly the opposite. I have a white family member who is ill. He has committed some criminal acts related to this illness. The black prosecutor and judge have been exceptionally harsh, far more than normal, because, according to his lawyer, “they see him as a spoiled rich white boy who should be punished.” He’s ill, and he’s definitely not rich or acting out because he’s spoiled. But they just assume that because he’s white, he’s soooo entitled that his actions are not due to his illness. But if a poor little black kid did the same things, I bet this prosecutor would be bending over backwards to explain away how his illness caused his actions and he needs treatment, not criminaliation. How exactly are minorities being treated worse here?
Phrase, number of Google hits:
“white thug”, 11,000
“black thug”, 116,000
Doesn’t look too race-neutral to me. (“White person” and “Black person” are about equal, 1.4 and 1.5 million, as a quick’n'dirty control).
this reads like something out of the sixteenth century.
Well, for starters, because “I bet” does not constitute evidence. Your contention is based on racist truthiness, not on truth. Here’s what the National Mental Health Association has to say about it:
I’m really sorry that your relative has been treated so badly. But you would be better off making common cause with people of color who are in the same boat, rather than seeing them as the enemy.
and missprism for the win. google is just so handy these days.
a sad, sad, sad state of affairs.
and, I’m not sure the situation improves much for adults. I’ve know too people who have received ECTs for bipolar disorder. One of them got several rounds of it. After living with the long term memory loss, and living with several relapses, they told me recently they will no longer have ECTs. Then there’s the whole reality of being institutionalized because they are proactively refusing ECTs…..and this is for an adult.
piny – this is great stuff. distrubing, heart-wrenching, but necessary to discuss.
i think the discussion has been contorted a bit. Not that i’m really complaining, it is important to discuss how the mental health industry is racially motivated, but that’s not the only focus of this post.
I agree with what piny states about race bias (and ability and class). After all, how can you explain that when i worked at a public elementary school as a programs director for “at-risk” youth almost all the children were students of color and yet the vast majority of students were White? Or how about when i worked at the public middle school in a classroom for “special needs children” that all but one of the students were Black when, again, the majority of students in the school were White? But by focusing solely on race we also get away from the larger point of piny’s post. Which, as i see it, is that qualifiers don’t make the “treatment” more acceptable.
I like the comment about shock collars for dogs. As an animal lib activist i’m always searching for those connections that people are making to justify human oppression based upon the oppression of other animals (and i can assure you the examples are plenty). I, for one, am also greatly opposed to shock collars for dogs. They, too, are torture. And just because we’ve come to believe that dogs are lesser-than (just as we view people with disabilities as lesser-than) doesn’t mean its true and doesn’t mean that we therefore have the right to inflict upon them any pain that we feel necessary just so that the lives of others are a bit easier.
piny – i hope you don’t mind if i link back to this post.
hexy – thank you for our persynal story. it means a lot that you open yourself up like that.
sally – that shit about the JRC is just fucked up!
Not to quibble, but ECT and the kind of shock “punishment” described above are two very different things. One is a treatment that, whilst traumatic, has a measured success rate. The other is a torture with no proven results.
I seriously considered ECT when I was hospitalised, and it’s still on the cards as a treatment if I relapse. For people like me, ECT can be a lifesaver, quite literally. It’s certainly not for everyone, and it should be the result of an informed decision by a patient and their doctor, but it shouldn’t be dismissed entirely. It’s often the only thing that can give a person back control of the inside of their head.
Vegankid: No worries. Thanks for reading.
I always think it’s very important for those of us who can speak out to do so when we can. There are too many who don’t have a voice.