The JRC electric shock "aversion therapy" controve

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AbominableSnoCone
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21 Jun 2006, 11:36 am

Recently as you may have read, a school serving disabled children with symptoms including autism was investigated for using extreme methods of "aversion therapy" which included rather frequent electric shocks as a means of discouraging unwanted behavior.

http://boston.com/news/daily/15/school_report.pdf
(the important details of the report begin at about page 6)

The court placed sever limitations on these methods to be used on students from New York state...
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articl ... at_school/

However, the New York State students are only about half of the school's students, the school's attorney is trying to fight the court's decision, not all of the electric shock therapy has been stopped, and the JRC has been through controversies like this in its past and has still managed to survive and continue this form of "therapy".
http://www.judgerc.org/NewsStories/regents_votes.html
http://www.judgerc.org/history.html

I'd just like to ask that people try to stay aware and informed of these issues and that they do whatever they can to make their voice heard on the issue.



aspiegirl2
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21 Jun 2006, 11:49 am

That would suck being shocked every time I did something bad. Usually time-out works just fine, and it worked for me when I was little. And spanking (of course my mom and dad were the only ones to do that).


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earthmonkey
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21 Jun 2006, 2:32 pm

And they call THIS "therapy"


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walk-in-the-rain
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21 Jun 2006, 3:18 pm

Some of these kids have issues which are not controllable by willpower so why would anyone think that shocking somebody would be able to alter their behavior. And the behavior they can be shocked for can be quite innoculous because all they have to prove is that it can lead up to more disruptive or serious behaviors. So students have been shocked for very minor things. Also - and this may be in the links but is worth mentioning - the center has an extremely strict diet because of the personal health beliefs of the centers leader.



ilikedragons
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30 Jun 2006, 6:36 pm

There was something on Law And Order like that the doctor shocked the kids so much one of them died and the moms and dads liked it.



blondie
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01 Jul 2006, 8:41 am

Thats really sad :cry:


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PenitentSpark
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07 Jul 2006, 3:59 am

I'd think that shock therapy wouldn't fix problems, but make them worse. Because then the brain would start to learn that its going to twitch a lot after it does something "bad", so then the person when they do something "bad" will soon start to twitch like they're being shocked even when they aren't using shock therapy.

(But that's just my guess - I haven't based that on any reports at all)



Hazelwudi
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16 Sep 2006, 8:54 pm

One wonders how treating children like animals is supposed to teach them how to behave as civilized human beings.

Is this supposed to make sense?