Shock treatment 'needed'

'I was not dragged screaming to have it'

NATASHA MARTIN/Fairfax NZ

ACCEPTABLE TREATMENT: Timaru's Nola Lister has few negative thoughts about the electroconvulsive treatment she had at Timaru Hospital in the 1960s.

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Nola Lister finds it hard to understand all the fuss over electroconvulsive treatment (ECT). But then she did prefer LSD therapy over ECT.

The retired Timaru woman has every reason to have an opinion on the 250 former psychiatric patients who are suing psychiatric hospitals throughout New Zealand over their treatment and the use of ECT. Miss Lister also received the treatment, but her views of it are very different to those taking the legal action.

Patients claim they were abused, beaten, raped or given electric shock treatment as punishment during the 1960s and 1970s.

Miss Lister had ECT treatment in Timaru hospital in 1964 and 1965. She was 30 and had been suffering from depression. The treatment involved a stream of electrons being sent through the brain to create a small seizure to shock the patient.

She does not recall any great debate over whether or not she should have the treatment but assumes she must have consented to it.

"I think they went for what they thought you needed," she said of the treatment options considered by the medical staff.

"I was not dragged screaming to have it. ECT was the thing a lot of people had in the 1960s."

Miss Lister was never aware of the treatment being used as punishment at either Timaru Hospital or the private psychiatric hospital Ashburn Hall in Dunedin.

If it had been misused she reckons she would have known.

"Residents, patients would talk. The gossip goes around."

For her the worst aspect of ECT was she would be unable to recall what had happened directly prior to it.

"That bothered me, that I could not remember."

Just how many times she had ECT she is uncertain.

Her memories of ECT are nothing like those often portrayed in television programmes. She does not recall "shuddering all over" from the current.

Miss Lister later became a patient at the Dunedin private psychiatric hospital Ashburn Hall. She had an experimental treatment using the hallucinogenic drug LSD.

"In a macabre way it made the day different. It was like dreaming or having a nightmare while you were awake. It helped clarify things. It was not terrifying. It left you tired. I don't think it did any harm."

Several other patients received the LSD treatment while she was at Ashburn Hall.

"It was not a happy pill. I think a lot now think they have to take something to have a good time."I guess I'm one of the few people who have taken LSD legally."

- © Fairfax NZ News