Psychiatric Savagery with ECT in India

As recently as 2024 the Central Institute of Psychiatry, a 643 bed psychiatric hospital in Ranchi, India, was still delivering unmodified electroshock sessions. That’s the version we see in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest when Jack Nicholson’s body and face savagely contort from the high voltage shock given him without a muscle relaxant or anesthesia.

Unmodified ECT and other horrific psychiatric “treatments” were commonplace in India until 2017. The Mental Health Care Act was then passed to decriminalize attempted suicide, prohibit sterilization of men and women to treat mental illness, ban the seclusion and chaining of patients, and make it illegal to administer ECT without muscle relaxants and anesthesia…all considered the norm before that of good psychiatric care…