Journal article excerpt:

From the perspective of most adherents to the medical model of psychiatry, eletroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a safe and effective treatment for severe and intractable depression.  Among biologically based psychiatrists and other mental professionals, ECT is generally (although not universally) considered avalid, although relatively invasive, option for the trreatment of major depression when all else has failed, aspecially when a patient is actively suicidal.  Despite popular misconceptions, and barbaric as it might seem, ECT is still widely in use.  What non-psychiatrists and others who've never witnessed it may not know is that there are striking parallels between women's wxperinces with ECT and with being battered by an intimate partner.  As depicted by Dr. Burstoe in this article, ECT,  a procedure done primarily to women, primarily by men, can be also wielded as a methodology for maintaining control over women.