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Ex-patients want end to shock treatment Sunday Star-Times New Zealand newspaper August 27, 2000 By Miriyana Alexander A woman who was given controversial electric shock therapy at Porirua Hospital in the 1950's is suing health authorities for damages. The Hamilton woman, now in her 60's, was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) without her consent and is seeking compensation from Ministry of Health and the Residual Health Management Unit. The case follows that of 110 former Lake Alice patients suing the Crown for mistreatment, including ECT, at the hospital in the 1970's. ECT was used to punish the adolescents and children for trivial offences such as not making a bed or not eating dinner. The group's lawyer, Grant Cameron, said negotiations with the Crown to settle the case out of court "were unsatisfactory" and the issue "would be coming to a head shortly". Last week, the Sunday Star-Times revealed ECT was still commonly used in New Zealand hospitals, prompting calls from dozens of people who were given the treatment. The Hamilton woman, who did not want to be named, was given 42 ECT treatments and feared it would kill her. Doctors sent her to hospital after her parents sought treatment for her behavioural problems. The woman said ECT made her "wake up feeling half dead. Everything was swimming in front of me and I could hardly stand up or walk. It was like being hit by a sledgehammer". Lying in her bed waiting for the treatment was the worst part, she said. "It was like waiting to be executed. Nurses held you down by the knee and shoulder and we had a gag put into our mouths. Then the big bang came and I was unconscious." The woman suffered short term memory loss after the treatments. She said ECT should be abolished. Earlier this year, a patient advocacy group presented a petition to Parliament calling for ECT to be outlawed. A Ministry of Health spokesperson said he could not comment on the proposed legal action until he had seen details of the claim. Psychiatrists said ECT was a safe and effective treatment for severe and life-threatening depression and was no longer administered in the barbaric and inhumane ways of the past. Patients gave their consent, were anaesthetised and given muscle relaxants. The psychiatrists said ECT had saved lives and they would have the treatment themselves if necessary. ECT works by replenishing neurotransmitters in the brain. They said the chemicals the nerves use to communicate with the brain and are depleted in depressed people. Wellington woman Jillian Hewitt, 53, was given ECT at Porirua Hospital when she was 15, becoming the youngest New Zealander to be treated with shock therapy at the time. Hewitt had an adusive childhood and took herself to hospital after feeling suicidal. She was transferred to Porirua Hospital, where she was kept for three months and treated with ECT. The first time I got it, I didn't know what was going on. The nurse came into the ward and called out names. When the woman in front of me was called, she screamed and tried to run out the door. I didn't have a clue what was going to happen, but it obviously wasn't good. "The nurse took me by the arms and put me on the bed. I got an injection, a guard was put in my mouth. When it was all over, I lay in the ward and looked out the window and saw a graveyard. That's were I thought I'd end up." Hewitt said the ECT made her zombie-like and she lost her memory. "I went back to my abusers because I'd forgotten what they'd done. And I put up with abusive relationships because I was a robot. I didn't know how to stand up for myself. I knew there was something wrong with me, but I didn't know what it was. I became a punching bag". Hewitt underwent counselling eight years ago and has been dealing with her ordeal since. "I'm damaged. This has scarred my life. I can't let people get close to me. I don't trust them." Any visits to the doctor or hospital are traumatic. "I have dizzy spells and am sick from the memories. ECT is barbaric and should be banned. No one should be given it under any circumstances." Another woman told the Sunday Star-Times she had been given 80 treatments of ECT 10 years ago, to punish and discredit her after she accused a surgeon of assault. "It was outrageous. You'd get the same effect by hitting someone over the head with a piece of four by two. How anyone can think this is humane is beyond me." Other former ECT patients spoke of their terror at the treatment and how it had affected their memories. No way out: the hospital that became a childhood hell By BILL BIRNBAUER Sunday 14 October 2001 Leslie Kiriona, who was given shock treatment as a patient there in 1973. Picture: JOHN DONEGAN The New Zealand Government has apologised to 95 people who were repeatedly treated with electric shock "aversion therapy" in the 1970s while under the care of a psychiatrist now practising in Melbourne. The formal apology, by New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and Health Minister Annette King, comes with a $5.3 million pay-out to settle a class action launched by the group, all former "patients" of Lake Alice Hospital, near Palmerston North, north of Wellington. While at the hospital in the 1970s, the "patients", aged between eight and 16, were given electric shocks and painful injections for minor breaches of discipline, and lived in a state of "extreme fear and hopelessness", according to former New Zealand High Court judge Sir Rodney Gallen. He said: "Statement after statement indicates that the children concerned lived in a state of terror during the period they spent at Lake Alice. All were in need of understanding, love and compassionate care. That is not what they received at Lake Alice." Most were taken to Lake Alice Hospital because their parents or state carers could not cope with their unruly behavior. Once at the hospital, a sprawling mental institution with dormitories, a school and a maximum-security facility for the criminally insane, they came under the care of Dr Selwyn Leeks, a tall, quietly spoken man who once described electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) as "fairly definitive treatment". Dr Leeks has a practice in the bayside suburb of Cheltenham. He established the 46-bed child and adolescent unit at Lake Alice Hospital in 1972, but left in the late 1970s after two inquiries into his use of ECT. A Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria spokeswoman said the board was concerned, and would investigate to see if further action was required. Electro-convulsive therapy, during which an electric shock is administered to the brain, normally is used with anaesthetics and muscle relaxants on patients suffering severe depression or psychiatric conditions. But at Lake Alice it was used without anaesthetics or relaxants and was given to the head and other parts of the body. Sir Rodney said that ECT was "in constant use" at Lake Alice hospital - administered on children as a punishment for unacceptable behavior, low school grades or running away. "The ECT was plainly delivered as a means of inflicting pain in order to coerce behavior," he says. "ECT delivered in circumstances such as those I have described could not possibly be referred to as therapy, and when administered to defenceless children can only be described as outrageous in the extreme." Statements by the former patients, which Sir Rodney accepted as true, showed they had received ECT on their heads, legs and even their genitals in cases where they had been accused of unacceptable sexual behavior. The statements referred to two incidents in which children had administered ECT to other children under the supervision of staff. Dr Leeks came to Melbourne in 1978 and was the director of child psychiatry at a child guidance clinic. In 1986, he worked briefly as a part-time psychiatrist at the Children's Court outpatients' clinic. Dr Leeks refused to comment on the New Zealand apology and pay-out. He still faces separate court action by two former Lake Alice residents. Last week, the 20/20 television news program in New Zealand showed Dr Leeks telling a former Lake Alice resident with a hidden camera that the electric shocks were "a form of aversion therapy". When the children administered shocks to another child it was "a behavioral therapy thing". One of the victims involved in the class action, Melbourne resident Kevin Banks, told The Sunday Age he was relieved the case was over, and welcomed the apology. However, he said he still had migraines and nightmares, and relived his experiences daily. He could not work and still suffered throbbing pain on his temples, arms and legs where the electrodes were clasped more than 20 years ago. He estimated he received more than 100 ECT treatments, as well as pain-inducing injections of the sedative paraldehyde. Sir Rodney described paraldehyde as a particularly unpleasant and extremely painful injection that was used to punish children. "There can be no doubt that paraldehyde was used by staff members on their own initiative, without any instruction from medical personnel, whenever the staff member concerned wished to impose a punishment and, on the basis of some of the statements, it seems to have been administered on quite a capricious basis." Other punishments were being kept naked in solitary confinement, and threats of being placed with criminally insane adults. Several former patients complained about sexual abuse from other inmates. Sir Rodney said that perhaps the most appalling story involved a 15-year-old boy who claimed he was locked in a wooden cage with a seriously deranged adult. "He describes a situation where, for a considerable period, he crouched in the corner being pawed by the particular inmate, screaming to be released and unable to get out or to get away from the contact to which he had been exposed." Sir Rodney said that even those not subjected to behavior modification lived in terror because of the random nature in which ECT was given. He had read all 95 statements and had interviewed 41 of the claimants in order to determine the amount paid to each claimant. "Claimant after claimant indicated that on one day in the week children were gathered together in the day room where they sat waiting for those to be selected to whom ECT would be applied. Both boys and girls spoke of young children lying in a foetal position on the floor in attempts to avoid being taken up for ECT, and of children who, in tears and through sheer fear, had lost control of their bodily functions before any application had taken place. Whether they received ECT or not, they all lived in fear of receiving it. "There were allegations, which I accept, that it (the ECT machine) was brought into the dining room and placed in a prominent position in order to encourage children to eat their meals if they were reluctant to do so." Complaints were made to police, welfare officers and probation officers, but they were not believed. "There was literally no way out for them," Sir Rodney said. An investigation by The Age in 1999 found that, in December 1975, Dr Leeks wrote to New Zealand welfare authorities about his use of shock treatment on a 13-year-old boy from the Polynesian island of Niue. He said the boy appeared "to be a living memorial to the inadequacies of the immigration system in New Zealand. He behaved very much like an uncontrollable animal, and immediately stole a considerable amount of money and stuffed it into his rectum. Incidentally, the amount of money which he had pushed into his rectum was retrieved along with a considerable amount of interest, which will be forwarded when he returns to you". An investigation by an ombudsman in the late 1970s found that a 15-year-old boy was given ECT against his will and without the knowledge of his parents or welfare officers. This might have been contrary to the law and was a grave injustice, the investigation found. In July 1977, Dr Leeks told Wellington's Dominion newspaper that his unit was full of murderers, rapists and liars. He had not used ECT in a punitive way, and defended it as a useful treatment when a patient was dangerous. In a statement, Prime Minister Helen Clark said that, whatever the medical practice was at the time, "what occurred to these young people was unacceptable by any standard, in particular the inappropriate use of electric shocks and injections". "The people involved were young - some of them children - and many from troubled backgrounds, including wards of the state," she said. "Some were sent to the child's adolescent unit primarily because there was nowhere else for them to go."
Posted 8/28/00 |