Ireland has enacted a ban on the use of electroshock treatment, also known as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), on minors under its Mental Health Act enacted in May 2026. The legislation, which safeguards those younger than 18 from the procedure that delivers up to 460 volts of electricity through the brain, has been praised by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) as a major human rights advance.
ECT has been linked to severe memory loss, cognitive impairment, and brain damage. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared ECT devices for those 13 and older for three limited conditions, but the practice is broadly administered off-label, a situation CCHR wants to see stopped.
CCHR helped obtain the first law banning ECT on minors under 12 in California in 1976, followed by a ban on those under 16 in Texas in 1993. In Western Australia, the practice was banned for those aged 14 and younger in 2014, with criminal penalties for anyone administering it to a child. Jan Eastgate, President of CCHR International, praised Irish officials for recognizing the need to prohibit ECT's use on minors, increasing the age to 17. "However, like thousands who called for ECT to be banned in the U.S. under the FDA's Final Rule in 2018, the ban should be extended to all ages. CCHR is committed to achieving this."
The Human Rights Institute in Ireland reported that the adoption of the Mental Health Act can be regarded as one of the country's significant developments in the advancement of human rights and in the reconsideration of the relationship between health, human dignity, and the public responsibilities of the state. The Irish Mental Health Commission noted that "the most significant right potentially affected by this legislation is the right to liberty and personal security."
The newly formed Stop ECT Coalition in the U.S., comprising health and human rights organizations representing hundreds of thousands of individuals, is urging a review of how ECT devices remain on the market. ECT devices were "grandfathered" into FDA regulation in 1976 as a Class III high-risk device, bypassing modern standards requiring a Premarket Approval (PMA) with clinical trials proving safety and efficacy. In 2018, the FDA reduced the risk classification of ECT devices to moderate risk (Class II) without safety and efficacy trials. The Coalition emphasizes that this incorrect classification allowed ECT devices to be used on children as young as five, pregnant women, seniors, veterans, and other vulnerable persons, and that involuntary application, still occurring in some U.S. facilities, has been condemned by the United Nations and World Health Organization as a human-rights abuse. More information about the coalition can be found at stopect.com/coalition.
Dr. John Read, a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of East London, who has extensively reviewed ECT studies, says that several leading proponents of ECT argued that it works because it reduces the intelligence or level of intellectual functioning of people, and that this brain-damaging therapeutic theory included lobotomies. He and colleagues have published a review of over a hundred studies demonstrating that the effects on the brain of ECT are very similar to those of a closed-brain injury.
Robert Rubinstein, a former psychiatry professor at the University of California in San Francisco, compared ECT to "kicking a Swiss watch," and psychiatrist Dr. Niall McLaren is unequivocal: "No psychiatrist needs to use ECT." A mental health strategy plan drafted by the World Health Organization's Department of Mental Health and Substance Use warned of ECT's health risks, including brain damage, cardiovascular complications, memory impairment, and even death. The plan states that ECT should be banned for children and non-consenting use may constitute torture.
"Ireland's ban on electroshock treatment for minors marks a significant step forward in protecting vulnerable young people from a damaging procedure. While this decision advances human rights and personal liberty in the mental health industry, advocates like CCHR and the Stop ECT Coalition continue to call for a complete ban," Eastgate said. CCHR, established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and professor of psychiatry Dr. Thomas Szasz, has helped obtain hundreds of laws worldwide that increase informed consent rights and prohibit deep sleep treatment, a combination of ECT and a psychotropic drug-induced coma.
