Mass killing under the guise of ECT
The darkest chapter in the history of biological psychiatry
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19445237 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gábor Gazdag (0000-0002-6914-8041, Semmelweis University, corresponding author), GS Ungvari (University of Notre Dame, Fremantle, Australia), Herwig Czech (0000-0001-9231-2762, Medical University of Vienna) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 482-488 |
| Publication date | 2017-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of Psychiatry (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0957-154X • E-ISSN: 1740-2360 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0957154x17724037 |
| PMID | 28829187 |
| OpenAlex | W2750541949 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
Following its inception, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), rapidly spread all over the world, including Nazi Germany. Paradoxically, at the same time, the euthanasia programme was started in Germany: the extermination of people with intellectual disabilities and severe psychiatric disorders. In Lower Austria, Dr Emil Gelny, who had been granted a specialist qualification in psychiatry after three months of clinical training, took control of two psychiatric hospitals, in Gugging and Mauer-Öhling. In 1944, he began systematically killing patients with an ECT machine, something that was not practised anywhere else before or after, and remains unprecedented in the history of convulsive therapy. He modified an ECT machine, adding extra electrodes, which he fastened onto a victim’s wrists and ankles to administer lethal electric shocks
Electroconvulsive therapy · Forensic psychiatry · History of psychiatry · Nazism · Political science · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Electroconvulsive Therapy Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Law · Medicine · Psychology · Treatment of Major Depression
| Highly cited | No |
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