So it is, for example, with One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. (Though I admittedly date myself by reference to a book that came out in 1962 and movie from 1975.)
Anyway, if you've read the book, or seen the movie, or simply know about the history of electroshock therapy, you'll know that it's far from noncontroversial. It is not depicted well in the book or movie. At all. There was a period of time in which it was most definitively viewed as barbaric to shoot electricity through someone's body and have them convulse in pain as a means of "curing" a mental illness.
If you thought that we didn't do electroshock therapy anymore, you were wrong.
If you thought that, at a minimum, we don't do electroshock therapy to people without their consent, you were also wrong. As this opinion amply reveals.
The Court of Appeal holds that its okay to use electroshock therapy on prisoners without their consent, at least if certain procedures are followed. It relies on a little-cited section of the Penal Code (Sections 2670 et seq.) passed in 1974. We call it "organic therapy" nowadays to try to get rid of the stigma. But it's the same thing ("The term organic therapy refers to . . . psychosurgery, including lobotomy . . . or other destruction of brain tissues, or implantation of electrodes into brain tissue [and] shock therapy, including but not limited to, any convulsive therapy. . . .").
I knew there were still people that did ECT. I didn't knew we were still forcing it on people; in particular, people who were in institutions without their consent.
The more things change. . . .
