OPRAH: These two women, Sue and Denise, have children with a behavior problem that is often so scary it has led them to do something that may seem unthinkable to a lot of you mothers. When their children act up, Sue and Denise have them shocked with electricity.

OPRAH: Both of their children beat themselves, literally, to a pulp. This is Denise's daughter Katie when she's acting up. This tape was shot in her doctor's office.

OPRAH: And this is Sue's son Terry, who hits himself so hard that he has almost put his own eye out with his fists. Some critics of electroshock, including Connie here, say that this treatment is barbaric, but Sue and Denise say they use these skin shocks only as a last resort.

OPRAH: Denise controls the device that shocks her daughter. Let's take a look.

DENISE: She loves physical activity. She likes jumping on her trampoline. She also likes cooking. The most disturbing thing about Katelyn is her hurting herself. She hits herself, just wham, wham, and screaming and yelling. She head bangs.

DENISE: I have a little black box that looks like a garage door opener. When Katie hits herself, I press the buttons, and it administers a shock to her leg. The first time that I had to administer a shock to Katie, I was in tears. I just didn't want to do it.

DENISE: Once I administered the shock, and I saw the results, it was like a miracle.

OPRAH: Sue's son Terry now lives at a special school where shock is a part of his treatment.

SUE: When he first started out, he started hitting his head against the rails of the crib in bed. As he got older, he would hit harder and faster. Till 1989, he was hitting at a rate of 124 hits per minute.

SUE: This is a tape of my son Terry at his school in Rhode Island. Terry can hit himself so hard and so fast that he can break his nose in less than a second. It's devastating to see him do this to himself. It just makes you feel sick.

SUE: About a year ago, I enrolled my son in a program that uses electric shock to control behavior.

SUE: This is Terry's psychologist, Dr. Worsham. When you hear the beep, Terry will receive his first shock.

[beeping]

SUE: When he receives a shock, he stops hitting. Recently, he's gone through a three-week period where he didn't hit himself at all. I think that's a marvelous improvement.

OPRAH: Sue's son Terry has a complicated diagnosis that includes cerebral palsy. He's been hitting himself since he was an infant. Denise's daughter is autistic and just began hitting herself two years ago.

OPRAH: Both Sue and Denise say that they had tried everything they could think of before resorting to shock treatments, but Connie says that shocking children with electricity is not the answer.

OPRAH: She, too, has an autistic child who has hurt himself, but Connie says she would never resort to shock treatments like Sue and Denise because?

CONNIE: Because pain teaches pain, and most of all, this is not a new story. This is a very old story. I want to tell you, as a mother, and I'm a mother, and my son was very self-abusive.

CONNIE: He learned to tie string, and he would tie it around his neck, and I was afraid I would discover him in the middle of the night dead because he would have strangled himself.

CONNIE: He ran away. He ran in traffic. He chased a train. He was extremely aggressive. He hurt me very badly, and I had to place him, and that's what I called it then, at the age of 11.

CONNIE: But I have learned from other mothers. I've traveled all over the country. I've talked to a lot of mothers. I've sat just next to mothers like you that said, "Look, I've tried everything. I love my child. I can't stand the pain of seeing him in pain."

CONNIE: It's a quick fix. It doesn't work long time. I got a call right before – somebody knew that I was going to do the show.

CONNIE: This is a mother who sat in your chair and said to me, "I want this. I know it's right. I have tried everything. You don't know my child." And she verbally attacked me because she felt so passionate about it.

CONNIE: She called me last night. She said, "I can't say anything more except that it doesn't work the long run." It doesn't work in the long run.

CONNIE: Pain teaches pain, and I believe that we've grown out of the things like lobotomies, leeches, and shock.

CONNIE: When I went to a psychologist the first time, I did have my son – my son was slapped in the name of treatment, and I went along with it because like you, it was the last resort. I had tried everything.

CONNIE: I love my child. I have a strong, caring family, and I thought I ran out of things. He was slapped. You know why? Because he didn't look at me, because he didn't touch his nose.

CONNIE: It wasn't about even his self-destructive behavior. That's the other problem.

CONNIE: What happens is, it's not just used for hitting, which is horrible. I feel your pain. I am telling you, I feel your pain. But it's for not even doing compliance, not even maybe doing an activity.

OPRAH: When you hear her say, Denise, it's not for the long-term, and you said that you felt that it was miracle that happened when your daughter was shocked the first time.

DENISE: Oh, absolutely. We're talking about behaviors where the child could go blind, and I don't know how you would stop that without doing something drastic.

CONNIE: Can I say what I want to say to you? This isn't about good and bad parents. This is about good and bad supports. It's about having all the information.

CONNIE: I didn't have all the information when I let my son be slapped, and I can't tell you I know it all now and I have a cure. There's no cure for this. This is a severe, lifelong disability.

CONNIE: But you know what, I want to say to you – and it's gonna hurt, and I don't want to hurt you. There is a child in there. There's a human being, and they can't tell you anything.

CONNIE: My son doesn't really talk. He communicates, but he doesn't really talk, and he has something to say, and I don't think he'd choose pain.

DENISE: But when a child's hitting herself like my daughter, she was biting flesh down to the bone on her wrist and her upper arms, what kind of life is that? What quality of life is that?

CONNIE: A horrible –

DENISE: She hated it. She would look into my eyes when she's beating herself and biting herself, chunks of flesh on her arms, and pleading with me, do something. She was totally out of control. There was no control.

OPRAH: So do you think your daughter feels better now that she is being shocked?

DENISE: Yes. It was a miracle. It was just unbelievable.

OPRAH: Does she offer any kind of resistance to being shocked?

DENISE: Not at all.

OPRAH: You think she wants to be shocked?

DENISE: At times, yes. Sometimes she just – in fact, there are times when she brings it to me. She put the TV remote on her leg.

OPRAH: Thinking that it would shock her?

DENISE: Well, no. She thought it was the device itself.

OPRAH: And wanting to be shocked? Are you saying that's what she –

DENISE: I think what she was doing is, she was building herself up to an anxiety or a tension that there was a possibility of her hitting herself, and this was a security thing for her.

OPRAH: What do you say, Sue?

SUE: When I first heard about shock, my son was about seven years old, and a psychologist told me about it because he felt it was his duty to tell me everything that was available, and I believe it was his duty, but at that time, he was talking about a cattle prod, and he told me that I would have to do it behind closed doors without any help from professionals and that I would have to take this cattle prod, and every time he hit himself, I'd have to touch him with it, and I thought the guy was nuts.

SUE: I really did, and so I went back to the school, and for year after year after year, 14 years to be exact, I followed their plans in school. I did everything they said, they came up with.

SUE: They had psychologists coming and going all the time, new programs all the time, and they did not work.

OPRAH: So what is the difference between what is happening to your son now and what you felt was cattle prodding years ago?

SUE: This, to me, is modern technology and science showing us a humane way of delivering a treatment that is effective.

OPRAH: But isn't the shock the same? Isn't the effect the same?

SUE: Yes, but it's with supervision with people who know what they're doing.

OPRAH: But does the supervision take the pain away from your son? All the supervision in the world, does it change the feeling your son?

OPRAH: If you felt it was like a cattle prod when he was seven, I'm just trying to understand how is it that you feel that it's different now. Because there are more people around?

SUE: I don't feel it is as strong as a cattle prod. I don't know. I've never felt a cattle prod.

OPRAH: Have you felt this?

SUE: Yes, I have.

OPRAH: Mm-hmm. And you felt what when you've been shocked yourself by –

SUE: Yes.

OPRAH: And?

SUE: It hurts, but it stops them from doing what they're doing, which is blinding themselves.

CONNIE: I have a question.

OPRAH: Yes?

CONNIE: If somebody's doing painful things – it's a simple question. If somebody's doing painful things to themselves, why would more pain work? What I have read over all these years is that you need to accelerate the pain, that the first shock maybe gets their attention, but then you have to make it more and more, and from what I understand, maybe it was just a simple SIBIS.

CONNIE: In fact, when I went to the psychologist, and he said, "You have to slap my kid," he says, "Don't worry. We don't use cattle prods anymore." I'm telling you, this is old, old. It isn't even science. It's old, barbarian –

OPRAH: But what about what the mothers say when the option is your child blinding themselves or the child causing severe damage to themselves physically? Or?

DENISE: One head bang could kill your child, one head bang.

CONNIE: I believe you, and I've seen the destructive tendencies of my own child, but I've also seen success.

OPRAH: Coming up in the show today –

SUE: Are we supposed to wait until our children blind themselves before we protect them?

CONNIE: No, no.

SUE: I tried the non-aversive programs. We had experts from New York come in and design a program specifically for my son, and that program failed too.

OPRAH: We're gonna talk with people at this clinic in Seattle who are using electroshock treatments to stop themselves from drinking liquor and smoking cigarettes.

OPRAH: But first, when we come back, we're gonna find out why Sue's struggle to help her son has cost you, the taxpayers, more than $650,000. We'll be back.

OPRAH: We're talking today with mothers who use electric shocks to help their disabled children who cannot stop hitting themselves. You all are mothers who have children who are being treated this way, too, and you wanted to say?

AUDIENCE: Yes, I wanted to say with children, first of all, you have to think parental rights. All parents have a right to choose what program they think is right for their particular child. In my case, I tried everything else, and nothing worked, and this is working perfect for him, and I'm very pleased with it. Without this program, I don't know what I would do without it.

OPRAH: You wanted to say?

AUDIENCE: Yes, my child used to deliver severe concussions to herself, go to the hospital and aggress against physicians and be turned away because they couldn't handle her, so it was very life-threatening, and I'd like to address Connie. Could you please tell us specifically what interventions you feel are alternatives?

CONNIE: Specifically, I have –

AUDIENCE: What interventions you're using that are alternatives.

CONNIE: Right. The specific intervention – and this is gonna sound a little humanistic, but it's treating my son as a person, realizing that he has an ability to communicate, even though he can't talk, making sure that I find out how he can communicate, so I can find out what he wants, getting him around real, regular – not real, excuse me – regular people, not just people with disabilities that can't talk, looking at his life and seeing what it's like.

CONNIE: And I know from my own experience with my own son, because I had him in a strict behavior program. I've talked to hundreds of parents. I've served on so many boards with other families that have tried everything.

CONNIE: What seems to be working now is treating this person like a human being and getting them a system to communicate, getting them to really make choices. What do they really want? Who do they want to be around?

CONNIE: And most important, getting them friends, relationships. You know what, just what you and I want. I know it sounds simple, because you're gonna say to me, "My son is so severe. I've tried it." I thought I tried it also, but I didn't try it.

CONNIE: I didn't have enough information.

OPRAH: Okay. - Okay, Connie, I've done all of that myself, but I'm asking you a specific question. What interventions would you use or are you using to prevent your child from self-injury?

CONNIE: I am – what I'm using as an intervention, as I said before, is, I'm treating him like a human being, giving him a way to communicate. That's how we tell each other what we want.

OPRAH: These mothers are saying that doesn't work. What are you saying?

CONNIE: No, no, I'm saying that I want to hear and feel what he's feeling, even though he can't talk to me.

OPRAH: Connie, Connie, is your son the one that's using facilitation? Do you use facilitation?

CONNIE: Does my son use facilitated communication?

OPRAH: Yes.

CONNIE: My son has a way of communicating through facilitation and without facilitation.

OPRAH: What does that mean?

CONNIE: It means that he is able to type with support. This is a very controversial issue, and I think it's good for another show, and it's kind of hard to explain in two seconds, but it's a way. It's, like, an augmentative way of communicating, so that he can tell me what he wants. He doesn't do it with me though. He does it with other people.

OPRAH: But that's a program that has almost been discredited.

CONNIE: Pardon me?

OPRAH: That's the facilitating program that has almost been discredited.

CONNIE: There is controversy. I wish I had time to get into that.

OPRAH: Then let me ask you this. Based on the tape that you've seen of Denise's child and Sue's child, you think loving them and treating them, as you say, as a human being –

CONNIE: I know these mothers love their child. I'm not saying they don't love their child. I am saying that what I did when I was told I –

OPRAH: When your child is, though, in the midst, the process of doing that to themselves, what can you do? What kind of intervention can you do that will stop that behavior? I know what you're saying, love them and treat them like a human being, but when the child is doing that –

CONNIE: Oh, I know. I can tell you what I did. I mean, we physically tried to stop him while was hurting himself. You can't let your child hurt themselves, but I'm saying that shock and that slaps don't work along the long run. They don't.

CONNIE: I wish I could be here with all the families that said the same thing to me. But you don't know, and it's working now, and then a month later, weeks later, years later, they came back, and they said, "It was wrong."

CONNIE: Pain teaches pain, and what they'll do is try to escape from it. So when these people, these kids came out of the programs where they were hurt, they were twice as bad. They were angry. Wouldn't you be angry if you were administered pain for your disability?

OPRAH: Yes.

DENISE: What do you do if your child's restraint-dependent? You hold them down, and as soon as you let go, they start all over again. You put helmets on. I've had helmets on my daughter, arm restraints on my daughter.

DENISE: We've tried to fade them out into a hat, something more acceptable like a barrette or a headband. Everything failed, everything.

OPRAH: Coming up, a woman who trains mothers how to shock their children. She's gonna face off against an expert who finds the procedure despicable. We'll be back in just a moment. Thank you very much. I'll try to get to you.

OPRAH: Dr. Pat Meinhold is a psychologist who treated Denise's daughter Katie. Pat says that shock treatment was the only option left to prevent Katie from beating herself to death. But Dr. Anne Donnellan, author of this book – it's called "Progress Without Punishment" – says that the shocking device is nothing more than a cattle prod that is used on helpless people.

OPRAH: You feel that way even though Sue said years ago she felt that it was a cattle prod, but now it isn't?

DONNELLAN: Hasn't changed. It's still a cattle prod. It's fancier. It costs more money. Still breaks down, still gets set off by other things in the environment, such as garage door openers and portable telephones. It's still a cattle prod. It isn't any different just because we call it a fancy name. And even the research that's out says that it doesn't work.

OPRAH: It doesn't work. This lady was saying to me during the commercial break that one of the things we're doing is asking the wrong question. What were you saying? Will you expand on that?

AUDIENCE: Well, I don't think the question is, should we stop these behaviors. The question is, what can we do to change these behaviors, and using aversives stops them, perhaps temporarily, for as long as you use them. But when you start them in again, when you start up – When you stop using aversives, the behaviors start up again.

OPRAH: Yeah, and you were saying that what has happened with Terry's son is?

AUDIENCE: The follow-up studies show that if you wait just a few years, the behaviors come back, that all the follow-up studies that are a few months or one year or two years, the behavior begins to repeat. The shocks go up. The voltage is increased. And only if you look down the road four years –

OPRAH: Has your son's voltage been increased?

SUE: No.

OPRAH: It hasn't gotten stronger over the years?

SUE: No.

DENISE: Neither has my daughter.

OPRAH: Neither has your daughter.

DENISE: Mm-mm.

OPRAH: But don't you feel that some of what they're saying is true? And I'll ask you this too, Dr. Meinhold. Don't you think that you really are just suppressing or stopping the behavior for the moment, but it didn't really change anything except the behavior, and the parent feels better, and the child feels better for the moment, but whatever was causing them to have that behavior, whatever the person inside is feeling hasn't really changed?

MEINHOLD: Well, I think that it's exactly true that we also don't put SIBIS in place or shock or aversive therapies in place by themselves. We never do. What we're doing is an aggressive approach to teach the child alternatives to the self-injury when those are obvious.

MEINHOLD: For example, a child who might hit themselves in order to communicate a need, we would certainly not punish the child for trying to tell us something. What we would do is punish that means of telling us, teach the child that that's not a way.

DONNELLAN: That's exactly the problem. If the child knows that doing this to say, "I have an earache," is the way it's worked in the past, and now that's suppressed, they can't even tell us if they're in pain. I mean, it suppresses everything temporarily. Witness the fact that even where it's successful in suppressing, if you take it off, the behavior comes right back. Not over time, but immediately.

DONNELLAN: The person is learning nothing. The body is not learning how to avoid doing that, and the only way to do that is to interact with that kid and find out what's happening inside that kid. That's the only way, and you can't do that if you're hurting somebody.

OPRAH: What does the shock do then? Momentarily, it does what?

DONNELLAN: If it works, and it doesn't always, but if it works, it momentarily suppresses that behavior. What they don't tell the parents is, the research says over time, when that behavior comes back, it comes back worse than ever.

CONNIE: I've seen it, I've seen it.

SUE: I've seen it, too, with the non-aversive programs that my son has been on. Now, recently my son had an ear infection, and for the first time in his life, with the help of the electric shock, instead of hitting himself, when he was asked, "What's wrong, Terry, what's bothering you," when he was crying, he took their hand and put it up to his ear. Whereas before he would've just hit himself and hit himself, and he wouldn't even be listening to what you're saying to him.

DONNELLAN: And so what you're telling us is that your child can learn.

SUE: You have to get his behavior under control, so that he knows he can concentrate on other things.

DONNELLAN: That's right, and there are other ways to get it under control rather than hurting him. I know you believe you've been told everything.

SUE: Like what?

DONNELLAN: For example, communication training. For example, relaxation training.

SUE: Myomassology.

DONNELLAN: For example, imagery. Sorry?

SUE: Myomassology.

DONNELLAN: I don't know what that is.

SUE: It's a massage program.

DONNELLAN: It is working all over the country. That's the irony that in 1993, we're suggesting to the American people that we need cattle prods to deal with people with disabilities when these very same children are in classrooms and workshops and every place all over the country.

OPRAH: Yes, ma'am?

AUDIENCE: I have a problem.

DONNELLAN: It's horrible.

AUDIENCE: My son goes to a special school. He's 19. He's very verbal. He tells me he doesn't like SIBIS, but he's learning. You have all these acceptable programs.

OPRAH: What is SIBIS? For the rest of us, what is SIBIS?

AUDIENCE: That was the type of shock. That was one brand of it.

DONNELLAN: And it failed, so now they have new machines with more shock.

AUDIENCE: Why, as a person who lives in New York State, who spends multi-million dollars on special ed, why could I not find one program – that my son's been kicked out of the best schools in this country.

AUDIENCE: He's been put on Mellaril, tophenol, and lithium, sent home drug toxic, and you say the shocks get increased. My son's dose of medicine was increased every month, until he came home toxic. The day after he's home, the school calls and says, "Don't bring him back."

OPRAH: So what is your point? Your point is?

AUDIENCE: My point is, if you have all these ways to help our kids, why can't we find them? We've been all over.

DONNELLAN: Well, I will give you some phone numbers of people to call who will come in and help you do that. How's that? That's a good beginning. I will give you free copies of books to tell you how to do it.

DONNELLAN: I will tell you, get your child out of that special school and put him in a regular class. He needs friends. He needs relationships. He needs a job. He needs people. He needs to be around people who aren't paid to be with him. He needs all of that.

OPRAH: You say it's not true?

AUDIENCE: There's only two treatment plans, medication or aversive. I choose aversive.

DONNELLAN: And that's wrong.

AUDIENCE: I live in New York. I'm from New York, and that's what's been offered to me.

DONNELLAN: And that's history, and you're not talking to the right people.

AUDIENCE: Those were the only two programs offered to me.

DENISE: You know what it is, it's bad support. It's bad programs.

DONNELLAN: It's abusing parents and kids.

OPRAH: And what they're saying, that's all you know about, but there's more available. What are you saying?

AUDIENCE: What I'm saying is that I think that's the reason. I'm a parent and a professional. I've been involved in developing and administering a training program in Illinois. Most people don't know about the broad array of alternatives to punishment and how to use them, and we need to fight for that. You need to fight for it along with me, and we don't need to argue about what's happening today. We need to have a vision about what we want for the future for our children, and I don't think we want them to be shocked.

AUDIENCE: Well, I'd like to know what you're gonna use when you have a 19-year-old, 170-pound young man charging you to break your neck. How are you gonna stop him, by saying no, don't do that? It doesn't work, it doesn't work.

AUDIENCE: I'm not suggesting that.

OPRAH: We're gonna talk.

DONNELLAN: If he's been on shock for so long, and it's so successful, why are you still doing it?

OPRAH: Good question.

DONNELLAN: I thought it cured him. I thought it took care of him.

OPRAH: She said that he's been on shock for so long and it's so –

DONNELLAN: He's gonna be a 75-year-old man still doing that if we don't teach him other things to do. The fact that the shock worked is the absolute proof that non-aversives would've worked, because that tells us he can learn from his environment, but it's the wrong way to teach.

OPRAH: Coming up, we're gonna talk with this man and woman who are getting electroshocks now to stop drinking and smoking. They're gonna demonstrate how it works. But first, the story of a little girl who died after getting shock treatment. We'll be right back.

OPRAH: Amber was one of the first children to receive electroshock therapy to get her to stop hitting herself. Sadly, Amber died this past spring. Norma, how did she die?

NORMA: She died of complications from hydrocephalus, water on the brain.

OPRAH: Were you in favor of the shock?

NORMA: Yes, when I found out about it. I didn't know about it early on. Amber received many other treatments that did no good, and she had a shunt in her head to keep the water off the brain, and she was targeting her shunt. She was hitting her shunt.

OPRAH: This is Greg. This is Katie's father, Denise's husband, and you were saying you resented?

GREG: The condescension of two of the panelists up here. I don't think Connie's son is in a league with our daughter, not even close. Running out in the street in front of cars is something pretty much every other kid does. Beating her head against the wall, having two of us to give her to give her a shower because we didn't want her smashing her face into the tile is a different league.

CONNIE: I don't think it's healthy –

GREG: And because you know more than we know doesn't mean that we'd be better parents if we knew more, if we knew what you knew.

CONNIE: I don't think this is about good and bad parents. I think this is about having enough information.

GREG: You say that out loud, but in your tone it certainly is. Your tone is certainly like that.

CONNIE: I've worked with a lot of families throughout the country, and there's a lot of information that isn't available to families, and I feel badly about that.

GREG: We have plenty of information. We have a ton of information, and this is what we've chosen for our daughter, and this is what's worked for our daughter. And we have no – the only regret I have is for letting her hit her head for a year without doing anything about it.

DONNELLAN: And what happens when you take it off?

GREG: Nothing, nothing.

DONNELLAN: Nothing. So she's fine now? She can put it away?

GREG: The only time something happens is when she goes in school, and she's environmentally aware enough to know that she can hit herself at school. That is the only difference.

DONNELLAN: Oh, I see. So it works in some places, and it doesn't work in others.

GREG: No, it's not that. They won't let her wear it at school.

DONNELLAN: I know that they won't let it in the school.

GREG: Had they let it in school, she wouldn't be hitting herself at school.

MEINHOLD: What Dr. Donnellan has said is that there are alternatives that have been promulgated, written about more extensively in the last ten years than ever before. We are entirely in support of those being available and parents being educated about them.

MEINHOLD: In fact, I spent a year educating Denise and Greg about those alternatives, and it's true. Her school district was uneducated. They did not give them all the alternatives they should have. However, those things logically were not the problem with respect to her self-injury. Katelyn was living at home. She was involved in a gym class on Saturdays with regular kids. She was going to the grocery store. She was –

DONNELLAN: She was going to a segregated school.

MEINHOLD: Yes.

DONNELLAN: When other kids –

MEINHOLD: Excuse me. Let me finish. And as we worked on her program, we looked at exactly the factors that you're talking about. Keep in mind, though, what you're suggesting is that any professional that suggests SIBIS is doing so because they're unaware or unable to work with these other alternatives.

DONNELLAN: No, I'm suggesting that they don't know enough. Because if they knew enough, I know they would never put a cattle prod on a child when they have the choice. Very few people would do it if they had a choice.

GREG: Well, we don't have a choice. That's what we're saying.

DONNELLAN: They certainly do, sir.

SUE: It's either that or tie them up.

AUDIENCE: I direct the Behavior Research Institute, the program that these parents have their children in. Dr. Donnellan, you would have us believe that because a procedure might have to be continued throughout a person's life that there's something wrong with it.

AUDIENCE: Now, the average student at Behavior Research Institute receives less than one application per day. There are a lot of treatments, like eyeglasses, which you need for the rest of your life, artificial limbs, which you need for the rest of your life.

DONNELLAN: This is not a treatment. This is a cattle prod to control people. This is not medicine.

OPRAH: Okay, let him finish. Doctor – Professor.

AUDIENCE: If you have diabetes, you might need insulin treatment for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, there are certain treatments that are not cut and dry all over, but they're prosthetic in that they have to be continued for the rest of your life. With them, you can have a decent quality of life. Without them, you can blind themselves or kill yourself through brain injury.

CONNIE: Even in surgery they give you anesthesia. I don't think it's fair to compare this with medical problems. It is a physiological, neurological problem.

GREG: It's a prescription. Our daughter has a prescription for the SIBIS.

DONNELLAN: We need to teach people how to control their own behavior and not be controlled by machines. What are we gonna do next, take all the black kids who are in trouble in the playgrounds in the ghettos and put it on them 'cause we can control their behavior, and maybe they won't hurt themselves or somebody else.

DONNELLAN: What minority will we do it to next? Who will we do it to next?

AUDIENCE: Why did you just now choose black children? That's the only children that need the SIBIS are black children or whatever?

DONNELLAN: There are no children who need cattle prods. None, none, none. There is not a separate category of human beings called autism. They are human beings first.

CONNIE: What scares me is, there's a lot of people watching this show, as you know.

OPRAH: Millions. Go ahead.

CONNIE: Millions. And the reason – millions. 20 million, I was told, 64 countries, and one of the reasons I came today – because it's hard for me to make my point, 'cause it sounds so simple. Treat them like a human being. Love them. I've done all that. I've heard these stories, Oprah, for years, and my pain is their pain.

CONNIE: I've had the same – my son tied string around his neck and turned blue. He could've killed himself. I'm not into a contest with whose kid is worse. That isn't the answer. The question is, what's right for these kids who can't talk, who can't protest, and over time, this doesn't work. The aversives get stronger and stronger. I've seen it myself.

DONNELLAN: It's magic. What we have to do is give them more magic, so when this machine doesn't work, we'll increase the voltage.

AUDIENCE: Dr. Donnellan, this allows us to teach them to talk. If they're hitting themselves 124 times a minute, like Terry Phelan is hitting himself, how do you teach him? This gives you a window of opportunity. It allows your interventions to get in through the screen.

DONNELLAN: That's the story they've been telling for 20 years, and it doesn't work, and the research that's been done on the SIBIS machine that has now been published in 1993 says people adapt to it, it doesn't work, and the minute they stop, even within the use of it during a particular day, it goes right up again.

AUDIENCE: There are five cases that have been followed up in the case literature up to two years with SIBIS, after SIBIS.

DONNELLAN: And it failed.

AUDIENCE: Four years after SIBIS and over 70% of them are symptom-free.

DONNELLAN: It failed.

AUDIENCE: We're talking about a treatment that works.

DONNELLAN: It published this year, and it failed.

AUDIENCE: That's not true. Dr. Linscheid is publishing an article this month.

DONNELLAN: And Dr. Ricketts, who published with Linscheid, said it failed. It's in the literature now.

OPRAH: Would you ever consider shock treatments to change your behavior? Coming up, a doctor who claims that his electroshock treatments have helped thousands of smokers and drinkers kick their bad habits. We'll see how he does it when we come back.

OPRAH: Binge drinking. But isn't drinking a symptom of a greater problem? Barbara?

BARBARA: Yes.

OPRAH: So how has the alcohol – doesn't it then just shock the symptom temporarily, because you haven't gotten to the root of why you really drink in the first place?

BARBARA: No. As a matter of fact, Oprah, I had tried several programs in the past with no results, and I couldn't understand why I binge drank and why I wasn't able to drink on a social level. Through the program and the aversion therapy, for the first time in my life, I realized why I drank, and I was basically self-medicating to forget a lot of abuse, a lot like yours, from my past.

OPRAH: Uh-huh.

BARBARA: So when I was able to realize the course of my drinking, I was able to face the problem and deal with it, and by the eighth day my insomnia subsided which I'd had for years. My migraines slowly went away. I had also looked different to myself in the mirror. I had scheduled plastic surgery, and now I don't see that person anymore, thank God, and things have been going great.

OPRAH: Since being shocked. How often are you shocked?

BARBARA: It's just over a few seconds.

OPRAH: How often have you done it?

BARBARA: Maybe every other day. I've done it every other day or every day over, like, a two-week period.

DOCTOR: Every other day for five sessions.

OPRAH: And what is it? Is it like getting a jolt of electricity to –

BARBARA: Yes, it is, Oprah, but one thing they stipulate. They don't want you to feel pain, associate the aversion with pain, and that's been stipulated every time, because they want you to just feel discomfort, and if you start feeling pain, they lower the level of the –

OPRAH: I wonder how that works then if it's being worked on a child who can't communicate, what it feels like.

BARBARA: Well, I don't know, because also I've been real interested in this when I found out they've been using it with autism. I own a talent agency in Spokane, but I also work with developmentally disabled children, and I have one that has cerebral palsy, and it's interesting. Some of the parents on the panel had mentioned children biting theirselves or taking chunks out of their bodies, and another lady's saying, "The shock treatment, how abusive is that?" The shock treatment, to me, seems so minor as opposed to a chunk out of a child that you desperately love and the healing process of a wound.

OPRAH: Can I see the shock? Are you gonna demonstrate the shock here?

BARBARA: Yeah, uh-huh.

OPRAH: Okay, can we see it?

DOCTOR: Certainly. Would you like to start with the alcohol first or the smoking?

OPRAH: Start with whatever you want to start with.

DOCTOR: Okay. Well, let's start with the alcohol here, Barbara. What we do is to start at zero and work up to what she finds is unpleasant.

BARBARA: Can you see the wristband?

DOCTOR: We have a little battery-operated electro stimulus machine here.

BARBARA: It's not working.

DOCTOR: Hooked on to the – hooked onto her wrist. And –

BARBARA: Nothing.

OPRAH: The professor here was saying this is 25 years old, and Connie was saying that the difference is that this is – when you run the Schick Clinic, you have people like Barbara who come to you who volunteer for this. But one of the issues we've been discussing here, as you heard, is that children don't really have a choice.

MEINHOLD: Yes. In fact, parents are in the legal position of making that choice for children. That's how our legal and social system is built. And when parents come to me and say, "When we understand all the alternatives and we see how this is working for our child, we want to do it," they are the guardians.

MEINHOLD: They are the ones to make that decision. People who are not involved with the child, who have not lived with them, who do not understand what treatments have been tried really should not insert their personal opinion into the issue. This is an issue.

DONNELLAN: My personal opinion is, I think Asimov said it best. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Anybody who tells you you have to use shock on children in 1993 is incompetent to develop an appropriate program without shock, and that's what it means.

GREG: [inaudible] is also incompetent.

SUE: What would you do if my son ripped his helmet off and started banging his head against the edge of a table, a film that the producer doesn't want to show here?

AUDIENCE: My son did that. He did it for a long time, and we never used aversives with him. When we had to, we held him, sometimes for an hour or two hours, but we taught him over time to speak for himself in the only way that he could, and he doesn't do it anymore at all.

SUE: I've tried to teach him to speak. I've tried to teach him to communicate.

AUDIENCE: How do you teach a child that it's wrong to hurt themselves by hurting them?

OPRAH: Back in a moment. When we come back, we're going to be shifting gears a little bit. Remember the electroshock treatments featured in the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" where they attached electrodes to their heads? We're gonna hear from people who say that shocks to their brain saved them. Back in a moment.

OPRAH: Unlike the skin shocks that we've been talking about previously on the show which are designed to change behavior, electroconvulsive therapy offers a shock that is sent directly to the brain. It's been used to treat depression and is making a comeback among some therapists.

OPRAH: Jocelyn says she underwent electroshock therapy to her brain to help her overcome depression. She says that it really did the trick for her. It helped. Diann'a also got electroshock therapy in her brain but calls herself a survivor. She says it's a dangerous treatment that should be banned, because it did what do you?

DIANN'A: Because of electroconvulsive treatment, I now have permanent, irrevocable memory loss. I have epilepsy. I have three grand mal seizures a day because of shock treatment, and I really do appreciate the fact that this lady believes, you know, that she was helped from shock, but in my opinion, this is the minority, and people like me and my association, which is World Association of Electroshock Survivors.

DIANN'A: I have 182 members of my organization that I've only formed since April that have been damaged by this treatment. And like I said, I am happy for you. I have a special place in my heart for every shock survivor, and I do believe that even though she believes that this helped her, she is still a shock survivor.

OPRAH: Do you believe that, too, Jocelyn?

JOCELYN: Oh, certainly. Well, first of all, I really think we need to clear up that we're using the same term for very different disorders and treatments here, and we need to be very specific in our terminology. This is electroconvulsive therapy, not shock treatment, as in what you speaking about before.

OPRAH: 'Cause this is to your brain.

JOCELYN: Yes, and ECT – yes, I'm a survivor, and I did not come out of it undamaged, and I knew what I was getting into, but I'm also a survivor, Oprah, of suicidal, major depression. I had been severely, majorly depressed for 18 months, a year and a half. Very few people survive that long.

JOCELYN: Major depression is very often a fatal disease. Ideation and attempts of suicide are a symptom of depression, just like a runny nose is a symptom of a cold, and ECT was a last resort measure that I took and chose and I requested. Because I was educated, I knew there were risks. I knew what I was getting into.

DIANN'A: Who educated you?

JOCELYN: Me and my husband and my doctor. We got books, we read, and I requested this treatment because –

OPRAH: Even in the midst of your depression, you were able to do that?

JOCELYN: Well, I had to have assistance. No, I couldn't do it on my own. When you're severely depressed, you can't read.

OPRAH: Yeah, that's why I asked the question. Yeah.

JOCELYN: I was very fortunate.

OPRAH: People don't want to bathe. They don't want to get out of bed.

JOCELYN: And I didn't. I didn't. I was almost – I was that far from catatonic. I was very suicidal.

DIANN'A: Did you know that ECT does not stop? There's nowhere in all the literature. I just passed, and I was instrumental in Texas passing the strongest ECT informed consent bill in the nation to ban this treatment for children under 16 and to inform the public of what's going on with ECT, because this does not stop suicide. It does not stop suicide.

JOCELYN: I just totally disagree. What it did was alleviate my depression temporarily. This is a temporary measure, and it was a lifesaver for me. I had tried every kind of antidepressant. I had tried literally dozens of antidepressants.

JOCELYN: I'd been hospitalized. I was desperate. It was death at that moment or ECT, and ECT bought me time. It got me well for a couple of months, so I could keep trying and keep going, and yes, I have partial amnesia, but I'm alive.

DIANN'A: And I appreciate that.

OPRAH: What happened when Diann'a was forced to have electroshock against her will? We'll be back in a moment.

OPRAH: Yes, against – yes, go ahead, against?

JOCELYN: We need to talk about that. We have some very different situations here. Unfortunately, she believes that this was against her will, and it was an uninformed choice, and I think what we're talking about really in all of these situations, even though these are different disorders, different treatments, the treatments themselves are not at issue.

JOCELYN: What is at issue are the people involved, the education, and the application of these treatments, and most importantly, the lack of funding for research. Everyone out there, everyone, you need to get on the phone and demand that this country legislate research. We are dealing with a lot of things that we know. We have a lot of facts. We know the benefits of ECT. We know –

DIANN'A: No, we don't know the benefits of ECT, Oprah.

OPRAH: She said it bought her time. We can't argue that it bought her time.

DIANN'A: And this is what I said, but she is the minority. We could not have passed this –

JOCELYN: I disagree with that.

DIANN'A: No, there are facts. You're the minority.

JOCELYN: We have conflicting facts.

DIANN'A: We could not have this passed, the strictest ECT legislation in America without the facts.

MEINHOLD: The cases we're talking about of self-injury are the extreme minority. I would say on the order of 90% to 99% of children with self-injury will never need anything like an aversive therapy, and this is the case here too.

DIANN'A: This is where they take the electrodes. They put them to your brain. They shock your brain, which gives you permanent, irrevocable memory loss. The studies prove it. The studies prove I have epilepsy. The studies prove that the suicide rate does not diminish.

JOCELYN: This is all true, and I would like to address it.

OPRAH: But she said the point Jocelyn made was, is that it bought her time, so that she could keep trying other things.

DIANN'A: And I think that's wonderful, but she was one of the people that it could buy time.

JOCELYN: What you are saying is true, and I would like to address it. First of all, no, the suicide rate does not go down. It's going up. It's been proven through studies that the suicide rate and the rate of suffering from depression is increasing incrementally with the growth in the population.

OPRAH: Jocelyn, what it seems to me you have done is, you've made the point that the professor was making earlier, but it doesn't happen with children who are not able to communicate.

JOCELYN: We're not talking about this.

CONNIE: Do we know what informed consent means? That means that you are – I know that's what you're saying, that you are informed, that you know all the risk. Do our kids really have informed consent? Do they have a choice? They don't have it. I, as a mother, have a choice for my child but there's some things I can't do.

DIANN'A: I don't understand. I'm a little confused here about – I know that the treatment that I am talking about, that the electrodes are put on our brain. If you've seen "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," this is what we have been through.

JOCELYN: No, it is not, not at all. Totally different. We had muscle relaxants. We were under anesthesia. It was a very calm, safe, medically-supervised – what you saw in that movie happened 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.

DIANN'A: No, it still happens.

JOCELYN: No, ma'am.

DIANN'A: I have 182 people that I can bring to the show.

JOCELYN: It's illegal for that to happen.

DIANN'A: No, it's not illegal.

JOCELYN: Yes.

DIANN'A: I have three people it happened to ten weeks ago.

JOCELYN: Were you administered an anti-convulsant and an anesthetic?

OPRAH: We'll be right back.

DIANN'A: I was not administered anything. I was forcibly shocked.