Dear bizi,

Upon reading this article, I was astonished. Although not so astonished as most of you since I was taught in Roman Catholic parochial and high schools in the Northeast when corporal and psychological "behavioral modification" was s.o.p. If only the Christian Brothers, who "taught", (i.e. regularly beat the crap out of me), in grammar school had had access to one the Rotenberg electro-shock machines, they could have saved themselves so much exercise.

It is clear that this "treatment" has nothing in common with "electro-convulsive therapy" which I believe is a valuable treatment of last resort for refractory depressives. This is no more than punishment. Or as the Rotenbergians choose to style it, "aversive" therapy. Somewhere in their lengthy presentation is a statement that one of the goals of the "therapy" is to reduce psychotropic medication. Since it is buried among all the data outlining the effectiveness of the "carrot-and-stick" aversive therapy program, I think its thrown in to make what their doing look more benign. Basically, B.S. Why do they want to reduce meds? Does that goal validate torture as a behavioral modification tool? Come to think of it, since mental institutions are uniformly starved for cash, why not save the price of the electro-convulsive machines and turn instead to punching the residents in the stomach when they misbehave.

I am familiar with group homes from my membership in the Depressive and Bipolar Support Alliance. We constantly receive new members from homes that sound like snake-pits. The city decided to combine programs for substance abusive patients and mentally ill patients back in 2002 to save money. The upshot is that all group home members, including those who are only depressed or bipolar and who do not use illegal drugs or booze are compelled to go through a program of behavioral modification for hypes and/or drunks. (My apologies to the hypes and/or drunks, we all have our problems.) They are frequently supervised by ignorant, untrained former hypes and/or drunks who have the tunnel vision of the ex-hype/drunk. Nothing, outside of visits to a shrink, is done to ameliorate mood disorders of those who are strictly mentally ill. The supervisory staff is typically authoritarian and insensitive to mood disorders, making up for in personal strokes what they lack in pay and knowledge. One wonders how the same economics play out in Rotenberg. Does the custodian get to shock the residents if the "supervisor" is busy elsewhere?

The Rotenberg "program" sounds so laissez-faire and unstructured that were it not "outed" in these articles, it would only have been a matter of time before some deviant "supervisor" used the "aversive behavior mod" to compel a patient to do something vile.

I suppose that I should read more about the pros and cons before reacting emotionally, but the very notion of electrically shocking people strictly for purposes of coercion reminds me of fascism. After all, according to the Rotenberg treatise, this is good for the resident population. Ergo, it must be good.

Cordially,