2008 Woodie Awards
Parents want to continue electric shock treatment on autistic son
Lindsay Tanner, Associated Press
Issue date: 3/15/07 Section: News
CHICAGO - Bradley Bernstein's parents say an electric cattle prod is the only thing that stops him from banging his head and violently punching his eyes, nearly blinding himself.
The Illinois couple's fight to continue shock treatment on their severely autistic 48-year-old son and the uproar over a Massachusetts school that uses similar treatment have pulled back the curtain on this extreme form of behavior modification. Critics call it outmoded, barbaric and unethical.
Even a leading supporter of the technique, Harvard-educated psychologist Matthew Israel, acknowledges, "The natural reaction is to be horrified."
"It always has been very controversial and is not politically correct, and if you want to advance your career, you try to stay away from it," said Israel, founder and director of the Judge Rotenberg Center, a residential school in Canton, Mass. The institution houses children and adults with autism, mental retardation and other behavioral and psychiatric disorders.
The school is under legislative and regulatory scrutiny for routinely using skin shocks on about half its 230 students to stop serious behavior problems, including self-injury.
Electric shocks and other painful or unpleasant treatments known as "aversive conditioning" were accepted more a generation ago. But mainstream psychiatry relies on new drugs and other methods that have proven effective.
Using this form of shock therapy is "cruel and unusual punishment," said Dr. Louis Kraus, an associate professor of psychiatry at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center. "The concept of doing that is frightening."
Some states, including Illinois last year, have banned or severely restricted use of electric shocks in mental health treatment.
But Israel favors the technique over psychiatric drugs that he says make students too drowsy to learn and says most critics "have never seen children who have blinded themselves, or banged their head to the point of brain injury, or bit a hole in their cheek."
The Illinois couple's fight to continue shock treatment on their severely autistic 48-year-old son and the uproar over a Massachusetts school that uses similar treatment have pulled back the curtain on this extreme form of behavior modification. Critics call it outmoded, barbaric and unethical.
Even a leading supporter of the technique, Harvard-educated psychologist Matthew Israel, acknowledges, "The natural reaction is to be horrified."
"It always has been very controversial and is not politically correct, and if you want to advance your career, you try to stay away from it," said Israel, founder and director of the Judge Rotenberg Center, a residential school in Canton, Mass. The institution houses children and adults with autism, mental retardation and other behavioral and psychiatric disorders.
The school is under legislative and regulatory scrutiny for routinely using skin shocks on about half its 230 students to stop serious behavior problems, including self-injury.
Electric shocks and other painful or unpleasant treatments known as "aversive conditioning" were accepted more a generation ago. But mainstream psychiatry relies on new drugs and other methods that have proven effective.
Using this form of shock therapy is "cruel and unusual punishment," said Dr. Louis Kraus, an associate professor of psychiatry at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center. "The concept of doing that is frightening."
Some states, including Illinois last year, have banned or severely restricted use of electric shocks in mental health treatment.
But Israel favors the technique over psychiatric drugs that he says make students too drowsy to learn and says most critics "have never seen children who have blinded themselves, or banged their head to the point of brain injury, or bit a hole in their cheek."
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