Treatment Opposition
Disagreement with mainstream psychiatry was often accompanied by a stated concern for patient welfare. “Anti-psychiatry” individuals and groups were critical of treatments they considered harmful or abusive. One notable target was electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). First invented in Italy in the 1930s, ECT involves using electricity to produce seizures in the brain, thereby alleviating mental illness. By the 1960s, popular depictions of ECT portrayed the treatment as frightening and as a means of exerting social control over patients. For those with “anti-psychiatry” perspectives, ECT was frequently seen as deplorable and invasive. Those with radical “anti-psychiatry” views rejected the notion of mental illness altogether, while more moderate perspectives accepted mental illness, but preferred talk therapy approaches over physical treatments (Sadowsky, 2017).
Objection to involuntary commitment was also prevalent. Amongst others, Thomas Szasz was particularly vocal on this topic. Strongly opposed to collaborations between the state and psychiatry, he cautioned against forced hospitalization as a violation of civil liberties and called the practice a “crime against humanity” (1976). Such views were shared and amplified by “anti-psychiatry” organizations. In 1969 Szasz and the Church of Scientology founded the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) with the intention of exposing abuses in the mental health care system.
The application of electric currents in medical treatments predates ECT. A technique developed in the 19th century, Faradism involved the use of a transformer to produce static electricity to treat patients. These illustrations are found in the Diethelm Library's copy of the "A Practical Treatise on the Medical and Surgical Uses of Electricity," a 1871 book by Americans George Miller Beard and Alphonso David Rockwell. Beard and Rockwell were both practitioners of electro-therapeutics.