The New Zealand Herald recently published (27 May 2024) an article with the title “Former Lake Alice patient wins court appeal for ACC to cover electric-shock injuries”.
The article describes how a survivor of Lake Alice has won a court case against the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), which was refusing him compensation for brain injury and cognitive impairment sustained whilst undergoing treatment by the late Dr Selwyn Leeks at Lake Alice Hospital in the 1970s.
“While the claim seeks cover for injuries as treatment injuries the evidence shows the ECT administered at Lake Alice was not anything like treatment, it was ECT torture,” Judge Henare said in her just-released decision.
The ACC is quoted as saying that it “was hard to find experts willing to talk about the effect of ECT in general, and specifically for the man.” No wonder. On a cellular level our brains do not know the difference between ECT as torture or ECT as therapy, so admitting that, in any circumstances, ECT could cause a brain injury would open a can of worms. Unless… psychiatrist Amanda Faulkner steps in to say that Leeks gave patients electric shocks lasting for 20 minutes, compared to a few seconds with conventional ECT.
She said it was often overlooked that children and young people received ECT on a machine Leeks had changed, so it was not like conventional shocks which lasted for seconds.“The shocks [the man] received, as also described by multiple other Lake Alice survivors, lasted as long as 20 minutes and with no muscle relaxant or anaesthetic,” Faulkner said.
That lets ECT off the hook, but I think a little confusion may have crept in. Elsewhere it is sessions of, for example, aversive electric shock treatment, rather than shocks, that have been described as lasting 20 minutes. (I have written here about the use of aversive shock treatment at Lake Alice.) Could anyone even survive an electric shock of the voltage and amplitude used in ECT that lasted for 20 minutes?
Congratulations in any case to the survivor.
ECT statistics 
It was not a continuous shock over 20 minutes it was a series of shocks the machine was modified and the power level was adjustable from uncomfortable to the higher end that rendered you unconscious and its not easy getting a win when no lawyer has the guts to take the case and most say its unwindable so for representing myself I did ok yes could have been better if the royal collage of shrinks had of provided me some help they said they would at apology but that was empty words they refused to back up with actions
Thanks. That makes more sense now. Congratulations on the judgment – no mean achievement especially representing yourself. Is the judgment going to go online?
no the judgement wont be online due to name suppression to protect others named as also having burns to genitals from ECT and one who was killed with the ECT machine didn’t ask for it judge just decided it would be best