July 2024    

      Bills to ban electroconvulsive shocks and psychosurgery on anyone under the age of eighteen had been filed this 2024 session in the Florida state legislature, but the bills did not pass the House. Such restrictions do not exist anywhere else in America, and only California, Texas, Tennessee and Colorado have passed laws limiting or stopping ECT being given to children.

     This Florida legislature finally follows the 2023 recommendations by the World Health Organization and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights which condemn any involuntary patient commitment, use of restraints and seclusion, and any forced treatment such as electroshock. Their joint published guidelines on “Mental Health, Human Rights, and Legislation” are designed to protect patients from coercive psychiatric practices, and the WHO and UN have both committed to a “zero tolerance” policy on these practices.

     “Electroshock causes brain damage and should be prohibited on children” their declaration reads.

     Coercive psychiatric practices “in mental healthcare violate the right to be protected from torture or cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment,” the declaration also states.

     The two organizations further recommend that “legislation must ensure accountability for any transgressions of laws providing for civil and criminal sanctions” as well as compensation.

     Since the publishing of this WHO and UN human rights proclamation, the Florida Citizens Commission on Human Rights along with other civic minded Florida non-profit organizations and state legislators alert to abusive psychiatric practices have helped passed fourteen pieces of legislation in 2023 alone which protect mental health human rights in the state.