AS a civil liberties campaigner and someone for whom mental illness runs in the family, I was really shocked and distressed to read the article about how electric-shock therapy is being used on mentally ill patients (Guardian, August 14).
I’m sure I am not the only one for which it conjured up horrific images, not only of films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but of A Clockwork Orange, in which scenes of a similar nature make equally distressing viewing as rape and murder.
For me, mental illness is not something that can be beaten out of people, just as homosexuality isn’t. I see mental illness as not something that is only suffered by ‘the mad,’ but something that plays a part in the psychology of everyone, from people who suffer from insomnia to people prone to mood swings.
Those administering these electric shock therapies can see that the side effects, including fear, anxiety, sleeplessness and suicidal tendencies, are hardly an appealing substitute for the original problems they are trying to solve.
Leanne Bulger,.
Woodford Green.
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