MPs want review of shock therapy

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

A group of MPs is pushing for a wide-ranging review of electro-convulsive shock therapy, a controversial treatment used on psychiatric patients since the 1930s.

In a report to Parliament yesterday, the health select committee urged the Government to commission a review of the therapy's safety and effectiveness.

A spokesman for Health Minister Annette King said she would take the committee's recommendations to the Cabinet.

The therapy is now used mainly to treat severe depression that has become life-threatening because the person is eating or drinking too little, or is at high risk of committing suicide.

It is administered, under general anaesthetic and after giving a muscle relaxant, from a special Machine using padded electrodes applied to one or both temples. The electric pulse induces a brain seizure.

In 2001 the Government apologised and paid $6.5 million in an out-of-court settlement to 95 former patients of the former Lake Alice Hospital's child and adolescent unit.

The claims included being given ECT and other treatments as a punishment.

The committee's report, which also wants the review to investigate the adequacy of controls on the therapy, expresses concerns about the treatment.

"Some of us consider ECT should be a treatment of last resort used only in strictly controlled circumstances with full regard to the risks of memory loss."

The committee's investigation was prompted by the 3000-signature petition against ECT organised by Anna de Jonge and Margaret Jongeneel, of the Patients Rights Advocacy group in Hamilton.

Mrs de Jonge has long campaigned for a ban on the therapy, which she said had left people with brain damage and memory loss.

"It is barbaric. It is like a concentration camp in the Hitler regime and the law allows it."

The Accident Compensation Corporation had rejected their claims.

Ms Jongeneel, 66, was given ECT against her will between the ages of 18 and 23 at Porirua Hospital for what were considered to be behavioural problems.

"I was just a normal teenager acting out."

She said the treatment damaged her. "I haven't had much memory at all, not being able to retain information. I've been spending all my life getting over it."

Auckland University senior psychology lecturer Dr John Read said figures he had obtained from the Health Ministry revealed that use of the therapy had more than tripled in five years. In 1995, 209 courses of the treatment were delivered, rising to 713 in 1999. In the same period its use had halved in Britain.

Nearly half the New Zealand recipients were over 64 and most were women. Usage on the West Coast was far higher than in Auckland.

"I'm sure a complete ban will come. In 20 to 30 years' time it will be one of the treatments that we look back on in horror."

But the president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, Dr Wayne Miles, said the safety and effectiveness of ECT was well documented.

It was still a key treatment for severe, life-threatening depression where there were reasons against using medicines, the patient had not responded to them, or the threat to life was so great the patient could not afford the wait of up to three weeks for oral anti-depressants to start working.

"There isn't the evidence that it's a damaging treatment. You will find people who say, 'This has saved my life, or my relative's life'."

Among the committee's recommendations are that as well as the college's guidelines on the therapy, the Government establish ECT technical standards and a code of ethics.

Dr Read said no studies proved that ECT prevented suicide and several showed it made no difference to suicide rates.

Herald feature: Health