Minnesota Woman Forced to Undergo Outpatient Electroconvulsive Therapy Against Her Will
Elizabeth Ellis does not want to go to the hospital anymore. She does not want to be anesthetized, hooked up to electrodes and shocked anymore. In short, she does not want to continue undergoing Electroconvulsive Therapy. However, her wishes continue to be ignored by both her hospital and the state.
Ellis, 67, of Moorhead, Minnesota, spent three months in Anoka State Hospital as a mental health patient after the death of her sister in late 2010. During this time she was forced to undergo Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT), a treatment for severe depression that uses electric shocks to induce brain seizures. She was released on January 5 of this year but ordered to continue treatment upon threat of involuntary re-hospitalization.
Sound familiar? Minnesotan Ray Sanford was forced to undergo over 40 electroshock therapy treatments against his will beginning in 2008. Desperate for reprieve, he reached out to MindFreedom, an Oregon based non-profit which argues that involuntarily administered ECT “violates the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, and amounts to torture.” In 2009, MindFreedom waged a successful campaign to end Sanford’s court-ordered electroshock therapy.
Today, Ellis, a former schoolteacher and guidance councilor, is standing up to the state and refusing ECT treatment. Her husband and community are at her side and MindFreedom is currently launching a campaign to get her court order overturned. But the future of Electroconvulsive Therapy in the U.S. remains unclear.
According to an MSNBC.com report, Electroconvulsive Therapy has made a “quiet comeback” and the number of patients receiving ECT has tripled since the 1980s. Just recently, on the 27th and 28th of January, the FDA convened a “Neurological Devices Panel” to review the safety of ECt therapy devices. Many of the panelists expressed a desire to see the devices remain classified as high-risk. The FDA will not rule on this matter for a least a year, but if the current high-risk classification holds, the law will require extensive safety and efficacy testing on all ECT devices.
According to the National Mental Health Association, approximately100,000 people, the majority of them women, undergo ECT treatment every year in the United States. How many of those people are receiving electroshocks against their will is unclear.
Learn more about Elizabeth Ellis’s story at www.mindfreedom.org/shield/ellis-ect/support-elizabeth
Learn more about ECT: www.nmha.org/go/information/get-info/treatment/electroconvulsive-therapy-ect
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Shock treatments are evil. Especially, when they are forced on you. Four years ago I was at a state hospital without hope. A doctor approached me and said shock treatments would help and I would be free faster. I signed an agreement that would protect the hospital if anything bad happened. They started with Bilateral treatments. I was a zombie. For those that don’t know bilateral is, Its when they shock you on both sides of the brain. I would ask to speak to the doctor in order to slow down the treatments with no luck. A year later a I took them to court. They offered to drop the Jarvis order, if I agreed to another year of treatments. I stupidly agreed and they started giving me 3 ECT treatments a week. Even though they were giving me unilateral treatments, I was still a lot slower and memories were lost. They would bring me down in restraints to the operating room yelling and screaming. I asked to speak to the doctor in charge with no luck. They would say that it was out of their hands. Meanwhile, they were making a large sum of money off my medical insurance. The treatments made me worse and they increased my medicine as I was locked up every other month. In Jan 2010, I was assigned a new doctor and social worker. They took pity on me after 78 shock treatments and stopped them. Today, I have slight brain damage and no short term memory at all. I am hoping my brain heals completely. What I want all people to know is be careful if you choose ECT as a treatment. Make sure there is a overall limit to them and that they are low. Maybe 5 to 10 treatments total. I am convinced the hospital that did this to me was looking for some quick money. As I walk the city streets, people come up to me all of the time and I have no memory of them. I called Medicare to find out how much they were making of my insurance. The phone agent from Medicare told me that they made thousands of dollars per treatment. Nobody, can argue that money was not a factor. I just hope nobody goes through what I went through ever again.
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