9. Bender’s Shock Treatments
Lauretta Bender is a psychiatrist most famous for the Bender-Gestalt Test, designed to monitor a child’s motor and cognitive abilities. However, not all of her contributions to the world of psychiatry were as benign and celebrated – she was guilty of some highly ethically questionable practices during the 1940’s.
Bender was working at the infamous Bellevue hospital during this period and became intrigued by what she deemed to be ‘childhood schizophrenia’. The cure she devised was unique – she basically got 98 paediatric patients higher than the sun for weeks at a time, giving them magic mushrooms and doses of LSD that would probably make the most saucer-eyed of hippies gibber like a ninny.
As if getting children loaded wasn’t bad enough, she also administered daily shock treatment to them in order to reprogram their brains. While she deemed the experiments to be largely successful, they can safely be deemed creepy and exploitative at best, and downright inhumane at worst.
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