OT: Shock Therapy for Disabled Kids

[cka203]

This is just SOOOOO wrong!

Just let someone try that with MY kid! They'd have more than a lawsuit to worry about!


Report: Shock therapy hurts kids at school

ALBANY, New York (AP) -- A state report on a Massachusetts school for the disabled said electric shocks were administered to students - sometimes as they bathed - for offenses as minor as nagging, swearing and sloppy appearance.

"Various injuries to students have been reported" at the Judge Rotenberg Center, according to the report released Wednesday by the New York Education Department.

The school in Canton, Massachusetts, receives $50 million a year from New York state to care for and educate about 150 youths because there is no space available in New York for the intensive treatment.

The education department said in a written statement the school must "cease certain interventions that threaten the health and safety of students at the school. Failure to do so would affect its approval to serve New York state students."

The center's attorney, Michael Flammia, called the allegations "absolutely not true" and said the state ignored its own November report that determined the center was doing an excellent job. He alleged the most recent evaluation was biased and prompted by a parent's lawsuit.

Education Department spokesman Alan Ray disputed Flammia's characterization of the earlier report, saying that it found compliance only in a limited number of areas.

The Rotenberg Center provides an intensive, 24-hour program that begins with a typical school setting, but about half the residents require the "aversive therapy" of electric shock, according to Rotenberg staff. The center describes the one- to two-second shocks as similar to a bee sting.

For years, the state has contracted with the facility, where autistic and other disabled students wear backpack-like devices that shock them when they misbehave.

Some New York parents said electric shock helped improve their children's behavior. Some of the youths had repeatedly bitten themselves or slammed their heads against walls so violently there was a concern they could blind themselves.

"It all comes down to a philosophical opposition to this form of treatment," Flammia said.

 

[mikiemo83]

This is just SOOOOO wrong!

Just let someone try that with MY kid! They'd have more than a lawsuit to worry about!


Report: Shock therapy hurts kids at school

the "learning" center in my town was just busted for the same thing - they used it as a teaching tool ( yeah who is the tool that thought that up?) and have to stop.

I think switching the tables and zapping the teachers would be a fun lesson

 

[harrisonhits]

Damn what is this Dr Mengele's child care center ?

 

[mikiemo83]

Damn what is this Dr Mengele's child care center ?

night as well be - it appears to be a center policy

 

[kolbitr]

While I respect all posters' strong disagreement with this sort of therapy, I must also respectfully add that this article is extremely underreported. This is no ordinary "child care" facility, but is often the last resort for children who have been in and out of various detention centres, institutions, and the worst sorts of juvenile facilities imaginable. Their behaviour is usually complex and sometimes extremely antisocial and aggressive, and the (mostly) teenagers who wear such devices are the ones who have posed a severe threat to themselves and to others. Many have been extremely violent, and have continued to pose a real threat to the people who work with them 24-hours a day, most of whom are physically non-threatening themselves (read: young women). The devices, which do sound horrible when paraphrased as bee stings, allow for a certain amount of freedom, both in and out of the facility, allowing some degree of greater socialization to occur.

In some cases, the children's parents have basically surrendered their children to the state, because they are either incapable of handling them, or because the parents have their own variety of drug- or criminal problems. In some cases, the parents are wealthy, yet choose to let others deal with their extraordinarily difficult child-rearing.

I have to stress that, if they were not at this institution, many of these children would be at far less-civil places, treated with far greater neglect, or hostility, or even physical abuse (such as in juvenile centres or possibly in actual prisons or psychiatric wards, for some of the "children" at the school are in their twenties.

Again, I am not truly acclaiming or approving this sort of therapy. I'm no expert. It makes me wonder, too. And, given these devices, it is very likely that there are abuses of them. But I do feel that the school, and the workers therein, is being represented in a slightly biased manner. Anyone who has worked in any sort of correctional capacity, or who has worked with the mentally ill, will attest that outsiders rarely understand the true nature, frequent difficulty, and genuine danger, of their work. The rewards can be tremendous, but so can the risks.

Just my opinion.

 

[mikiemo83]

While I respect all posters' strong disagreement with this sort of therapy, I must also respectfully add that this article is extremely underreported. This is no ordinary "child care" facility, but is often the last resort for children who have been in and out of various detention centres, institutions, and the worst sorts of juvenile facilities imaginable.

my sister works for a similar place in th esame town but with older patients and I have seen the results of these physical assaults. I just asked her and she disagrees with the use of this and she is the one who would be protected.

This school also has "lost" students recently (wandered off) and have many other issues to go along with this shocking situation. I would like to think that much of the violence is learned and that if we were a more caring society many of these issues would be handled differently. I know it doesn't always work but the way a child with a disability is treated/raised can make a difference. It is just many times it is too easy to institutionalize than to sacrifice.

My wife and I have friends in a similar place and as outsiders are watching the 2 of them bicker on how to raise their son (husband refuses to acknowledge condition). I am not in their shoes but by reading things like this I would do everything within my power to raise my child at home if it was at all possible. The child was supposed to be violent but plays with my kids with no incidents. He just needed a little extra attention and care.

I guess what I am saying is there has to be a different way to "punish" these kids. Some schools take away privileges and that seems to work fine - if I remember correctly when I was a kid and messed up Mom took away privileges from me and I recall not wanting to lose my fill in the blank again so I didn't do the same stupid thing.

 

[cka203]

As a mother of an autistic son, I do understand the perils caregivers sometimes face. My son (thankfully!) is not violent, but does sometimes have meltdowns where he places himself (and anyone near him) in potentially harmful situations.

However, I choose to use positive reinforcement vs. aversive techniques. IMO, shock therapy and the infamous "holding therapy" (where children have been suffocated to death), are clearly cruel and unusual punishment. These kids probably don't even understand why they're being punished, as these behaviours are usually their way of showing their discomfort, pain, confusion, or basically telling us caregivers something is wrong. They're asking for help. Shocking them is not an appropriate way to deal with that.

Just my .02

 

[Mark_Henderson]

I know this isn't a funny topic, but it has me thinking of the "dance mailmain" episode of Cheers, where Clif has a behavior therapist shock him every time he says something annoying.

I majored in Psych. and I know that some behavior therapists advocate this in some cases and maybe with certain behaviors it can help. Part of the problem, I think, is that many of the people who work in lower level jobs in institutional settings are folks who couldn't get a job anywhere else, and entrusting them to manage this kind of thing is a really bad idea.

 

[kolbitr]

Part of the problem, I think, is that many of the people who work in lower level jobs in institutional settings are folks who couldn't get a job anywhere else, and entrusting them to manage this kind of thing is a really bad idea. [/B]

This may be true in certain cases. On the other hand, at this particular facililty many of the workers are getting or hold degrees in special education. In other words, they have chosen to teach these students rather than go into more traditional special education, or even into traditional schools. Not everyone is cut out for it, as it is highly stressful and difficult, but some stay for several years or many more. Others are trained in psychology or social work. The school is meant to be that, primarily, not merely a holding facility, and the students who are there receive an actual curriculum, to the extent that they can and are willing. There are probably many untrained personnel there, too, but I don't think they have any control over the restraining methods (but I don't know that for sure).

I have no argument with Mikie's and cka's posts from above. Institutional care can not duplicate a loving home life, and caring parents. And I am not advocating electrical shocking, since I do not know enough about it. I only wanted to bring some more information to the table, since the article brought so little.

Cheers.

 

[HelenaHandbsket]

I had the same kneejerk reaction that everyone else had to this story - and then I took some time to look into it.

This isn't some daycare center duct taping the kids to their seats. Nor is this some center that isolates their clients & drugs them into a coma like stupor all in the name of control & helping them.

Not something I can prove, but according to their site:

"Our program is primarily based overwhelmingly on positive reward procedures. For a description of our positive programming procedures, please click here. We use aversives as follows: only with about 50% of our population; only after we have tried positive-only programming and found it to be insufficiently effective; only as a supplement to a program of powerful, positive rewards that is probably unrivaled among residential programs for special needs students; only with prior approval of the parent, a physician, and of the Bristol County Probate Court; and only under a set of comprehensive protections against abuse that include quality control monitoring, a 24/7 digital video monitoring system, and human rights and peer review oversight. For a detailed description of 13 safeguards we use to insure careful use of aversive procedures, please click here. A new student entering JRC has only about a 30% chance of having aversives used in his/her program during the time that he/she is a student at JRC. For those students with whom we do use aversive procedures (only about one half of our current population), the average student receives only 1-2 applications per week."

"There are, unfortunately, some students whose problematic behaviors are so severe that positive positive programming procedures alone may prove insufficiently effective to treat their problematic behaviors. These are the types of students who get referred to JRC. Currently we have over 230 of them from many different states. As noted earlier, court-authorized aversives are employed with only 50% of our current students and with only 30% of incoming students.

It should also be noted: (1) that we accept the really difficult students, with case-hardened aggressive and/or self-abusive behaviors, that public schools refuse to handle and that other programs often refuse to accept and refer, instead, to us; (2) that we proudly maintain a near-zero rate of rejection and/or expulsion of students (no student is rejected or expelled due to the severity of his/her behavior problems alone); (3) that we have a policy of using no or absolutely minimal amounts of psychotropic medication; and (4) that we do not "babysit" students, but require, instead, that they engage in an active program of learning and behavior-changing. In other words, it would be easy (and is easy in the case of some schools) to avoid the use of aversives if one accepts only the easy-to-treat students, demands next to nothing of them, and uses heavy amounts of psychotropic drugs to medicate them instead of operating an active educational and treatment program."

Not one system of learning works for every person and there are cases so severe that we could not begin to imagine what a day in the life of would be like.

So, although the quick reaction is to call these people monsters, I certainly hope that this gets investigated & carefully reviewed before just being terminated. These are not kids on a little too much sugar or slow learners.

 

[aaava]

While I respect all posters' strong disagreement with this sort of therapy, I must also respectfully add that this article is extremely underreported. This is no ordinary "child care" facility, but is often the last resort for children who have been in and out of various detention centres, institutions, and the worst sorts of juvenile facilities imaginable. Their behaviour is usually complex and sometimes extremely antisocial and aggressive, and the (mostly) teenagers who wear such devices are the ones who have posed a severe threat to themselves and to others. Many have been extremely violent, and have continued to pose a real threat to the people who work with them 24-hours a day, most of whom are physically non-threatening themselves (read: young women). The devices, which do sound horrible when paraphrased as bee stings, allow for a certain amount of freedom, both in and out of the facility, allowing some degree of greater socialization to occur.

In some cases, the children's parents have basically surrendered their children to the state, because they are either incapable of handling them, or because the parents have their own variety of drug- or criminal problems. In some cases, the parents are wealthy, yet choose to let others deal with their extraordinarily difficult child-rearing.

I have to stress that, if they were not at this institution, many of these children would be at far less-civil places, treated with far greater neglect, or hostility, or even physical abuse (such as in juvenile centres or possibly in actual prisons or psychiatric wards, for some of the "children" at the school are in their twenties.

Just my opinion.

Sorry, but this is wrong. Shock therapy is something designed when electricity was discovered, and thought of as a 'cure all' for everything for a while.

It's not. Physicians and humans will look back 100 years from now and shake their heads when they read archives of forums from the early 21st century and read stuff like the above.

Are you a physician? What is your knowledge of this? My brother is a physician. He's vehemently against using shock therapy for anything, even seizures. It's just *WRONG*. It's torture. It doesn't *FIX* anything. All it does it scramble the brain so the *SYMPTOMS* may go away.

Scary. This is just scary. I think Massachusetts, is in too many ways a scary place. The gov't is completely corrupt. The education system is a complete joke. And DSS in that state is among the worst around.

Scary.

 

[kolbitr]

Sorry, but this is wrong. Shock therapy is something designed when electricity was discovered, and thought of as a 'cure all' for everything for a while.

It's not. Physicians and humans will look back 100 years from now and shake their heads when they read archives of forums from the early 21st century and read stuff like the above.

Are you a physician? What is your knowledge of this? My brother is a physician. He's vehemently against using shock therapy for anything, even seizures. It's just *WRONG*. It's torture. It doesn't *FIX* anything. All it does it scramble the brain so the *SYMPTOMS* may go away.

Scary. This is just scary. I think Massachusetts, is in too many ways a scary place. The gov't is completely corrupt. The education system is a complete joke. And DSS in that state is among the worst around.

Scary.

You might want to read a little more closely. I was not advocating its use, only elaborating on the circumstances at this particular school. Moreover, this is not electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, which was once widespread and which is, oddly, making a comeback among certain physicians. That is truly extreme, by any definition. What is being described, and what is being opposed here, is a far different thing. It may still be wrong, it may be cruel, but it is *not* ECT, and its effects are very different.