Antipsychiatry scholarship provokes academic freedom debate

Some background to this is that Toronto is where one of the worst cases of psychiatric abuse ever took place - the "depatterning" experiments of eminent psychiatrist Ewan Cameron, a description of whose treatment sounds like something out of a horror film - including vast numbers of electroshocks, making patients listen to tapes over and over again, and forced sleep - there is a fascinating interview with one of the survivors in the first chapter of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine". It is good to see that Toronto University are making some attempt to address this nightmare past. Your article quotes heavily Professor Shorter, who has written a book advocating the use of ECT as safe - he glosses over these events in a few short paragraphs, as he does much else. His is certainly not a neutral viewpoint.