Shock Therapy Used on Children

ECT- a punishment on Children

Electroconvulsive therapy, also known as shock therapy, is used to treat patients who have severe depression. It is also intended to cure mental disorders such as, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and autism. Adults are the majority who receive shock therapy, but children do as well. Although ECT is used to treat severe depression, it is now being used as punishment on children to change their behaviors. For the first time in four decades, children and adolescents are being used as subjects of new shock therapy studies (Cauchon). Electroconvulsive therapy is curing the mentally disturbed and now being used as a punishment on children.


Students, some as young as six years old, are receiving shock therapy at the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Massachusetts. This center is for children and young adults who have behavioral and mental problems and is the only place in the country that uses shock therapy on their students. Most children at the center have violent behaviors such as self abuse, hitting and kicking. Children with such behaviors are punished by shock therapy.


The use of shock therapy is an attempt to control the behavior of troubled children (Newsday.com). If a student is obedient and/or violent with a staff member, he/she will receive a 2 second shock with 65 volts. A student can wear up to five electrodes strapped to their arms and their legs (Cooper). The shock is said to feel like a pin prick, but one mother thought otherwise.


The mother of 17 year old Antwone Nicholson, Evelyn Nicholson, wanted her son to be removed from the JudgeRotenberg Center after strapping an electrode to herself. Antwone's mother was told that the shock would feel like a pin prick. "Let me tell you, it hurt far worse than that. Two seconds felt like two minutes. It was like a parade of pins stabbing me in the arm. I could see why students would alter their behavior after feeling that sensation," said Evelyn. Her son suffered when his illness could have been cured in less harmful ways.