1 January 2008 Update to news story below:

21 November 2007 Updates:

Original Story:

Stop the Cover-up About Forced Electroshock in New York State!

MindFreedom members and readers may recall that the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) has a history of aggressively pursuing court action to force electroshock (ECT) on unwilling inmates of its inpatient facilities.

OMH officials have been vague when asked about the numbers. At a public meeting in July 2007, director of OMH recipient affairs John Allen stated that "less than a dozen" New York State citizens received court-ordered electroshock without their consent last year at OMH facilities, and that the number of forced shocks is going down. He offered nothing to document this assertion.

The fact that there were 15 court petitions for forced shock in just one judicial district in New York State during the first six months of 2007 raises questions about the accuracy of Allen’s numbers.

In hopes of documenting the real extent of forced shock in New York, I filed a request under the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) on October 2, 2007.

Among the documents I asked for were “records or portions thereof pertaining to all petitions requesting a judicial order authorizing the administration of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) over a patient's objection or without her/his consent brought by the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) and/or its facilities from January 1, 2000 to the present.”

I also asked for “any written statements, policies, guidance, memoranda and/or electronic communications pertaining to OMH’s policies or procedures for handling matters pertaining to petitions for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) over objection or without consent, dated from January 1, 2000 to the present.”

On November 2, 2007, I received a reply from OMH – a brief letter and three policy statements dated in 2005 and 2007.

The letter from OMH said that, “In regard to your request for the petitions to the courts, OMH has only recently begun to track them centrally and our facilities have not maintained files responsive to your request."

In other words, OMH has decided to stonewall a citizen’s request for information that is of concern to the public. I can only speculate about why the agency is trying to keep the truth from coming to light.

I immediately appealed this decision to OMH, with a copy to New York’s Committee on Open Government, which is responsible for ensuring that state agencies comply with FOIL. My letter pointed out that they did not include the records that they have “recently begun to track centrally,” and also described several types of records that are kept by OMH facilities and OMH Central Office that would provide the information requested.

It’s clear that they did not do a very thorough search for policy statements, memos, emails and other documents – there’s a statement about forced shock on their website that they didn’t even bother to include! I’m personally aware of at least a dozen other OMH documents on this subject that were prepared between 2000 and 2003 (when I worked for OMH), not to mention the many internal emails that have certainly been sent on this topic since 2000.

OMH has 30 days to respond to the appeal. If they still refuse to make this information public, I have the option to initiate a court action (and/or talk to the press about OMH and forced shock).

See "Related Content" below to download PDF's of:

• Darby Penney's initial letter to New York Office of Mental Health requesting information about forced electroshock under the state's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL).
• New York Office of Mental Health's 29 October reply.
• Darby's 2 November response.