Protecting oneself and one’s loved ones against ECT can be increasingly difficult. In most states, even if you refuse ECT, psychiatrists can force it on you.

Though there are laws to protect one’s legal rights and ensure due process, psychiatrists can go to court and get a judgment ordering involuntary ECT.

No less than the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture has labeled involuntary ECT as “torture.”

Of course, some of electric shock’s earliest uses were just that. During the Nazi era, German psychiatrists administered lethal bouts of ECT to hundreds of mental patients they deemed unfit for life.