The Food and Drugs Administration is considering banning shock devices that are used as therapies to treat children and adults with developmental disabilities.
The days of shock devices used to manage patients with developmental disabilities including aggressive behavior may be numbered as the FDA is considering a permanent ban on electro-shock devices.
The agency released a 126-page report this week, revealing it is currently reviewing what are known as electrical stimulation devices and could move to bar their continued use.
"The FDA has grown concerned that serious risks of using these devices may outweigh the benefits for patients with limited intellectual ability or developmental disabilities, and that they may pose an unreasonable and substantial risk of illness or injury to patients," FDA spokeswoman Jennifer Rodriguez said, according to CBS News.
The FDA said that as per its knowledge, the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Mass., is the only facility using the devices as an "aversion therapy" technique to control the behavior of children and adults with "special needs."
Last year a YouTube video showing a screaming teenager being shocked repeatedly by staff at the controversial Judge Rotenberg Educational Center went viral on the internet. It was also used during civil litigation against the center.
Former Rotenberg students told FDA investigators that they were burned by the devices, and felt anxiety, fear and depression.
"It feels like a thousand bees stinging you in the same place for a few seconds. The device is torture, in the plainest sense of the word," one student said, according to Examiner.com.
According to the FDA report, the agency will have a panel meeting to discuss the fate of these shock devices, often referred to a dog's "shock collar."
Defending themselves, the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center officials said they use shock treatment as the last resort for patients who failed to respond to other psychological and psychiatric treatments.
"Without the treatment program at JRC, these children and adults would be condemned to lives of pain by self-inflicted mutilation, psychotropic drugs, isolation, restraint and institutionalization - or even death," the Rotenberg Center said in a statement.
In 2013, the FDA confirmed that the center only gives shock treatment to students after gaining consent from their parents. Despite this, the center has long been under fire from disability advocates who called shock treatment inhumane and barbaric.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Justice and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture also started an inquiry to determine whether the rights of students in the school had been violated.
The school was granted approval by the FDA to use shock treatment on patients who "exhibit self-injurious behavior of sufficient intensity and frequency to cause serious damage to themselves." However, in 2012, the agency sent the center a warning letter stating that the devices used didn't have proper clearance as they had been modified to deliver a current nearly three times higher than permissible.
Despite the bad press the center has received, many parents have backed their methods saying it's unfair to deprive their children of this therapy, especially when all other treatments fail to produce desired results.
"Our kids are one punch away from going blind or killing themselves and need treatments that work quickly with minimal side effects," said the parents of a daughter with a rare form of epilepsy, according to Medical Xpress. "It would be a terrible injustice to deprive a child of such an effective life-saving treatment when all other available treatments have consistently failed."
Also known as electroconvulsive therapy, shock treatment is a procedure in which electric currents are passed through the brain, intentionally triggering a brief seizure. According to a Mayo Clinic report, the treatment can provide rapid significant improvements in severe symptoms of a number of mental health conditions. It may be an effective treatment in someone who is suicidal, for instance, or end an episode of severe mania.
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