NAACP Called for Bans on ECT

     The NAACP has said that electroconvulsive therapy constitutes “torture” when given without consent and they called for bans on the use of electroconvulsive therapy for anyone under the age of twenty-one and for any adults prescribed it indiscriminately. Their 2017 proclamation listed ten reasons for their “vehement” opposition to its continued use, and eight of those noted the broad barbarism of ECT, not its discriminatory use against African-Americans.

     Established in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the oldest civil rights organization in the United States. Its purpose is to protect and advance the civil rights of African-Americans and other minorities and it has over half a million members registered at its 2200 affiliate offices across the United States and overseas.

     Only the final two of the ten sections of their call for bans on ECT note that African-American men are diagnosed with a serious mental disorder 1500 times more often than white men, that all African-Americans are classified as mentally retarded twice as often as whites, that they are given significantly higher doses of neuroleptic drugs than are whites, and that they are therefore at risk of receiving electroshock when labeled with a serious mental disorder.

     Those two sections of the proclamation also quote from Herb Kutchins’ 2008 publication Creating Racism: Psychiatry’s Betrayal which says that racists have “consistently attempted to justify oppression by inventing new mental illnesses and by reporting higher rates of abnormality among African Americans or other minorities.”

     However, by far the greatest thrust of their call for bans – eight out of ten sections — is based on the acual danger and oppressive use of ECT itself, regardless of the ethnicity of those it is given to.

     These other eight points of their proclamation note that with ECT any person’s brain is shocked with up to 450 volts of electricity which “overwhelms delicate brain circuitry and function.” They also state that the February, 2013 United Nations Special report on Torture describes ECT without consent as “torture” and recommends “an absolute ban on all forced and nonconsensual” use of electroshock.

     Other sections focus on the negligence of the FDA failing to regulate ECT despite the many reports the FDA has received showing the adverse effects of ECT, such as cardiovascular complications, cognition and memory impairment, death, prolonged or latent seizures, pulmonary complications, skin burns, and a potential worsening of the psychiatric symptoms ECT has been prescribed to treat.

     The NAACP proclamation also notes that there is no required reporting of how many are given ECT each year or of the ages of those people, and that for more than forty years the FDA has never required the manufacturers of ECT devices to provide clinical evidence that the devices are safe and effective.

     The NAACP not only calls for bans on the use of ECT, but also “vehemently opposes any attempt by the FDA to reduce the risk classification of the ECT device or to allow its continuance when there are no clinical trials submitted by the ECT device manufacturers to the FDA proving safety and efficacy.”

     In December, 2018, however, the FDA went ahead and did exactly that, and the ECT devices in use since then are Class II, moderate risk, not the earlier, high risk Class III designation that had prevented such broad use of ECT before then.

     Today anyone, regardless of race, age, religion, or disagreement can be ordered to undergo ECT treatments and risks any of those adverse effects that the FDA has long known about, but has refused to rule on preventing.