Turkey accused of abusing patients with electric shocks
Mental Disability Rights International published the report days before Turkey is scheduled to start negotiations to join the European Union. Human rights will be included in the discussions beginning Monday.
People with mental or psychiatric disorders are “subjected to treatment practices that are tantamount to torture”, the report said.
“As the European Union meets to consider Turkey’s human rights record... we ask them to demand action by the government of Turkey to end these human rights violations,” the report concluded.
The group said electric shock therapy were “massively overused in Turkish psychiatric facilities in cases for which there is no clinically proven justification”, and that they were used as a form of punishment.
“(Electric shock) without the use of anaesthesia and muscle relaxants violates all internationally accepted medical standards,” the report said.
Turkish Health Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment.
The head of Bakirkoy Psychiatric Hospital, Turkey’s largest mental health facility, said that 40 to 60 people undergo electric shock treatment at the hospital every day.
“We’re carrying out (electric shock) under orders from the Health Ministry for patients who really need it,” Musa Tosun said. “There are patients who can’t be given anaesthesia.”
Tosun said electric shock can also be used on children and even pregnant women.
“(Electric shock) is harmless, it is even safer to give (it) to a pregnant woman with depression than medication,” he said.
Researchers saw bedridden children who were unable to feed themselves and left without help, according to the report. “Investigators observed children emaciated from starvation. Staff reported children dying from starvation and dehydration.”
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