Turkey using electric shock 'torture' on patients

Patients in Turkish psychiatric hospitals are held down and given electric shock treatment without anaesthesia, a Washington-based human rights group has said, calling the practice a form of torture and urging the European Union to demand an end to it.

The report by Mental Disability Rights International comes as Turkey sets sights on negotiations to join the European Union, talks that will include discussions of the country's human rights record.

The report said there were other abusive situations, including patients dying of starvation due to neglect and said that people with mental or psychiatric disorders are ”subjected to treatment practices that are tantamount to torture”.

A delegation from the group will meet Turkish officials in Ankara today to discuss the report, Laurie Ahern, associate director of the group, said.

“In the short term we would like them to stop the most egregious human rights abuses that we found,” Ahern said yesterday. “The most egregious one is ECT (electroconvulsive shock therapy) without anaesthesia and that could virtually be stopped overnight.”

The report said that patients were subjected to electric shocks without anaesthesia or muscle relaxants and that electric shocks were used as a form of punishment.

Ahern said that in some places patients were dragged into a room and held down by two or three people while they were being given electric shock.

“Without anaesthesia ECT is torture,” she said.

The Health Ministry had no immediate reaction, but the head of Turkey’s largest psychiatric hospital, the government-run Bakirkoy Psychiatric Hospital, defended the practice.

Musa Tosun said that 40 to 60 people undergo electric shock treatment at the hospital every day.

The report quoted the head of the ECT centre in Bakirkoy as saying that “patients with major depression feel that they need to be punished. If we use anaesthesia the ECT won’t be as effective because they won’t feel punished.” The official was not further identified.

Meanwhile, Turkey will not send its delegation to Luxembourg to open EU accession talks before officials see the document detailing the bloc’s negotiating positions, the Turkish foreign minister has said.

“No one expects us to go to Luxembourg before seeing the negotiation framework document,” Abdullah Gul, who is scheduled to head the delegation, said yesterday.

“Of course there is a possibility that negotiations will not start,” Gul said, but he added that “there are intense efforts” to bridge differences.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, returning from an official visit to the United Arab Emirates late yesterday, also played down tensions, saying: “I don’t think it’s a very serious problem.”