Editor’s note: this report was first published by Mad in America on 7th July 2025
Recent guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and American Psychiatric Association (APA) has finally acknowledged the risks of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). These organizations focus on ensuring that patients receive informed consent, acknowledging the risks of long-term memory loss and other health concerns due to the procedure, and recommend against the use of ECT in children.
But this has stirred up ECT promoters like Joseph Cooper and colleagues, who published a recent opinion piece in The Lancet Psychiatry defending ECT. Yet according to other researchers (published the same day, also in The Lancet Psychiatry), Cooper et al. cherry-pick data and ignore the large body of research on ECT’s harms. Worse, Cooper et al. “directly oppose” the principle of informed consent, according to their critics.
The critics were led by Michelle Funk, a key figure in WHO’s mental health policy, and also included ECT survivors like Sarah Price Hancock, and researchers like John Read.