Inadequate, Biased Informed Consent Protocol Given to Most ECT Patients

     Dr. Chris Harrop, a clinical psychologist, just published on MadinAmerica.com the results of two surveys he and his colleagues conducted on-line on 1144 recipients of ECT and their caregivers. Per their responses, few unbiased, standard informed consent procedures are done by psychiatrists or ECT administering personnel in 44 countries.

     More than half the respondents were from the US, UK, Australia, and  Canada, and the ECT procedures were “modern” ECT, delivered between 2010 and 2024. 74 percent of the ECT sessions were given for “depression.” 17 percent were given for psychosis or schizophrenia, 15 percent for bipolar/mania, and about 8 percent for catatonia.

     One set of questions in the study addressed the application of the informed consent law that demands a prospective patient be given a thorough explanation of the benefits and risks of any procedure before it can legally be administered.

     63 percent of the patients and their caretakers were told, erroneously, that  “ECT is the most effective treatment for severe depression.” 78 percent were told that “ECT can be life-saving and can prevent suicide.”

     
     Neither of those “benefits” has been proven to be true by any valid studies. In fact, only eleven random, placebo-based studies of ECT have ever been done, and those were all done forty years ago. None of them showed any convincing, scientifically valid measure of actual benefits from ECT, and only 17 percent of the patients or their caregivers were told that there is, in fact, no clinical evidence of any long term benefits from ECT.

     So much for honestly naming the benefits of ECT through the current informed consent legal protocol. How about accurately giving the safety risks?

     Only 17 percent of the ECT candidates were told that there was any long term or permanent memory damage. Only 12 percent were told that there was a risk of heart problems after ECT.

     Even the American Psychiatric Association and the FDA now admit that ECT can cause permanent memory problems. One recent study has also estimated that between one in fifteen and one in thirty ECT recipients has had a non-optimum “cardiac event” after ECT.

     Although these results could be questioned as anecdotal and subjective because of the “personal” nature of the on-line questioning, the high percentage of false benefits and risks given to these 1144 people is noteworthy. If more than three quarters of ECT patients are being lied to about the benefits and risks of ECT, the violation of informed consent laws means that seventy-five percent of all ECT patients are being given the treatment illegally.

     In the UK it is known that about one third of all ECT patients are forced to receive the treatment against their will because they have been deemed  “incompetent” to give their rational consent. The results of this new study show that far more patients than that are apparently “consenting,” but they are not consenting to the actual benefits and risks of ECT.

     That’s really no better than administering ECT against their will.