Electroshock and Informed Consent

Abstract

Informed consent is a vital issue in all forms of medicine, especially in psychiatry, where patients are often in extremely vulnerable states of mind, customary practice involves high risk to patients, and the law allows for abrogation of traditional civil rights based on judgments of perceived mental incompetence. This article addresses informed consent related to the practice of electroshock. The author argues that genuine informed consent for electroshock is nonexistent because psychiatrists deny or minimize its harmful effects and, as long as the threat—overt or covert—of involuntary treatment exists, there can be no truly voluntary informed consent. The author discusses four primary ways psychiatry violates informed consent in electroshock practice and presents an outline of important information to know about electroshock. An annotated review of the research is provided to back up each of the author’s assertions about medical effects and lack of efficacy of electroshock.