I'm not going to advocate, even in the most general sense possible, for a practice that I'm not particularly knowledgeable of. However, you literally said "and

I'm not going to advocate, even in the most general sense possible, for a practice that I'm not particularly knowledgeable of. However, you literally said "and physical anguish". Patients being sedated (and given muscle relaxants in order to avoid the patients hurting themselves while under anaesthesia) would address that. GP pointed that out. Nobody will be able to say that there have never been any cases where the patient was awake, even when administered general anaesthetics, but if the anaesthesia for some reason fails, that would not be the doctors knowingly inflicting anguish. If ECT were (still) done without anaesthesia nowadays, you'd be right, but my limited understanding is that it isn't. If your understanding is different, by all means share it, but the sarcastic "no cases ever, right?" rhetoric isn't really an argument. The story of patients trying to run away definitely sounds like an involuntary application of the treatment, which certainly seems inhumane in all but perhaps the most extreme of cases. But the story was from the 1970's. Are the present day practices of administering ECT still the same? If not, present day use should not be judged based on that. I agree that side effects such as memory loss sound scary and severe, and should be taken seriously. Maybe they aren't given enough consideration. I can't really judge that since I don't know the circumstances that lead to ECT being considered. All in all, it's obviously an emotional topic, but I don't think the way you responded to GP was really fair.