From The CT Examiner. “He remembers saying no. No to shock therapy. The procedure was something he had thought about after his psychologist and psychiatrist at The Institute of Living in Hartford, where he was being treated after his latest suicide attempt, had recommended it.
A month before, Chris Dubey tried to jump off the overpass at Hunting Hill Avenue in Middletown. He woke up shivering in the creek below. Earlier that day, he flipped on a hair dryer and tossed it into a bathtub of water but the hair dryer shut off — likely a safety feature.
“I realized, `wow I’m still alive and I better get some help because I didn’t die, and now I’m lying in the creek. I didn’t know how badly I was injured, but I didn’t have he ability to get up,” Dubey recalls. “I yelled for help.”
He was taken by helicopter to Hartford Hospital, where he was treated for fractures of both feet and legs, and his skull. When he was well enough he was taken to The Institute of Living for further treatment.
Refusing shock therapy at the Institute, Dubey landed in a Hartford probate court with his parents and a psychiatrist they had independently hired, hoping he wouldn’t endorse the treatment called ECT or electroconvulsive therapy by doctors, or popularly better known as electroshock or shock therapy.
Probate Judge Robert Killian Jr., who claimed to have heard more than 9500 mental health commitments and thousands of estate and trust matters by the time he retired in 2105, ordered the therapy after reviewing testimony and materials.
Dubey was now a ward of the state. Soon after, he was involuntarily treated 16 times with shock therapy by staff at the Institute of Living.
“I told them multiple times that I didn’t like what they were doing,” said Dubey. “I felt really violated what they did to me.”
