Mass killing under the guise of ECT: the darkest chapter in the history of biological psychiatry

• Published in: History of psychiatry Vol. 28; no. 4; pp. 482 - 488
• Main Authors: Gazdag, G, Ungvari, GS, Czech, H
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.12.2017
• Subjects: Biological Psychiatry - history; Electroconvulsive Therapy - history; Electroconvulsive Therapy - mortality; Germany; History of medicine and histology; History, 20th Century; Homicide - history; Hospitals, Psychiatric - history; Humans; Mental Disorders - history; Mental Disorders - therapy; mass killing; euthanasia; Nazi Germany; Electroconvulsive therapy; psychiatric patients
• ISSN: 0957-154X; 1740-2360
• DOI: 10.1177/0957154X17724037

Following its inception, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), rapidly spread all over the world, including Nazi Germany. Paradoxically, at the same time, the euthanasia programme was started in Germany: the extermination of people with intellectual disabilities and severe psychiatric disorders. In Lower Austria, Dr Emil Gelny, who had been granted a specialist qualification in psychiatry after three months of clinical training, took control of two psychiatric hospitals, in Gugging and Mauer-Öhling. In 1944, he began systematically killing patients with an ECT machine, something that was not practised anywhere else before or after, and remains unprecedented in the history of convulsive therapy. He modified an ECT machine, adding extra electrodes, which he fastened onto a victim’s wrists and ankles to administer lethal electric shocks.