Are undergoing electric Shock Treatment in growing numbers. Now known as electroconvulsive therapy, or ect, the controversial treatment is being used on severely autistic children who self harm. The bbc has been given access to film a child being treated using ect. Our worlds chris rogers meets parents who say the treatment is helping their children and the critics who say it is barbaric. A warning that the following programme shows children self harming and undergoing electroconvulsive therapy. Some viewers may find these images upsetting. 16 year old jonah is about to have electroconvulsive therapy, ect, today, in america. We are doing bilateral Electrode Placement at 20 . Our cameras have been invited for the first time to film this controversial treatment on a child. Modern ect is a very simple, quick, safe procedure. Some call for a total ban on ect for children. Its traumatic brain injury, very much like somebody whos just endured a severe concussion. Butjonahs mother, amy, is campaigning to allow more children like him to have the procedure. There is no doubt that ect is the only reason thatjonah has any quality of life whatsoever. Jonah is autistic, and before the treatment he used to lash out and punch himself. Her nose is busted, and she was bleeding. She was constantly punching herself. I was convinced that our love would heal her. Ect is rarely used in these cases, but some families feel its their only option. I have to have hope that it will be a Miracle For Sofija because we need a miracle. So those were the first pictures we ever got of her. So this was sofija in the orphanage . Yes, she was probably two years old in those. In 2009 Us Army Intelligence officer Chad Calvaresi and his wife kaci travelled to serbia to adopt five year old sofija. Sofija had spent much of her short life suffering neglect and abuse in serbian orphanages. And she was autistic. Hold on, hold on sofija is one of the most charming little girls. We fell in love with her. Chad and kaci already had three children. Their youngest, nine year old seth, was also autistic. They wanted to use their experience to help a child unlikely to find adoptive parents. The first day we were with her, she hit us all and bit us all and pulled my hair and punched our youngest son. Determined to give sofija a better life, they brought her back to america. That first christmas, she was writing and reading, it was just amazing. Jesus loves me, nessa loves. We had great hope. Im trying not to cry we had great hope that we kept saying i cant wait to see where she will be in five years, because at that point, i was convinced that our love would heal her. But over the next few years, sofija became increasingly violent and uncontrollable. The fall of 2013, she had an incident on a school bus where she aggressed towards another student on the bus and got out of her seat and jumped on the bus driver, and within a week or two we were seeing it at home. Itjust increased and increased and increased, to the point that we werent even sure how to keep her safe. It was the worst case scenario. We had to bring her to the er twice. Oh, my gosh. The last time she had beat herself so bad, so her nose is busted and was bleeding, her lips were busted open and bleeding, she gave herself black eyes, and then this is her cleaned up after. They cleaned up all the blood, but she had blood all over her face. It is estimated one in ten autistic children seriously self harm. No one really knows why. Some theories link it to anxiety, caused by an overload of sensory signals. Others to frustration. Autistic children can struggle to communicate. Behavioural disturbance is very common in children with autism and oftentimes is readily amenable to treatments, but sometimes those behaviours, they cannot be easily curtailed and can sometimes become quite dangerous to the child. Is she aware that she is doing this to herself . She is. It is like she is caught in the fight or flight mode. She is fighting, she is fighting herself. Afterwards, she is dealing with pain from the injury she caused herself, but dealing with the sadness, because you can tell, she realises that she lost control, and she is upset that she hurt herself. When she was aggressing towards me, my instinct was, as a mom, ijust wanted to grab her and hold her and help her and wait. She got so big and strong that i couldnt do that. In early 2016, for her own safety, sofija had to leave home and go to a secure unit at the renowned Kennedy Krieger institute for brain disorders. It often took three highly trained care staff, using special techniques, to prevent sofija injuring herself and others. We have tried years of behavioural therapy, years of medication, and we have proven time and time again that, for sofija, these dont really work. So like every other mom dealing with problems with their kids, i went to google and said, dr google, autism self injury treatment. And i started finding some articles on ect. Kaci came across author and campaigner amy lutz, whose own violently autistic son jonah has had ect forfive years. 13 is always green. Ect has been transformative forjonahs life and our life. We went for a period of time for years and years when jonah was raging, often multiple times a day. Ferociously. And the only reason he is able to get home, that he is able to be with us here in atlantic city, he is only able to do that because of ect. Amy runs a Charity Offering Advice to parents in a similar position. And kaci has arranged to meet her. Nothing else that we have tried has given herenough improvement to keep her safe, so how can we not take that chance . That is why, for us, ect was not a hard decision. So many people asked us about when we sentjonah to Kennedy Krieger when he was nine, and when we ended up getting ect later, was it such a hard, hard decision, and for me, it wasnt it was the only decision. We went into it very enthusiastically, because it provided some hope that we would be able to find something which might actually work, after all these failed attempts. Many are far less enthusiastic. This hard hitting Campaign Video is made by the Citizens Commission on human rights, a group founded by the church of scientology, who oppose most psychiatric treatment. Some Human Rights Organisations call for a total ban, especially for children. Leading the fight against ect is dr peter breggin, who has long campaigned against the psychiatric establishment. After seeing for myself the desperation of sofijas situation, i want to know why he thinks ect should never be an option. It is traumatic brain injury, tbi. The electricity not only travels through the frontal lobes, because that is where the electrodes are, that is the seat of intelligence and thoughtfulness and creativity and judgment, it also goes through the temporal lobes, the tip of the temporal lobes, and that is the seat of memory. So youre blasting with Electric Current the seat of memory. You are damaging the very expression of the personality, the character, individuality, and even, if you believe, in the expression of the soul. Jonah is heading into new york for his latest ect session. He is one ofjust a few hundred self injuring children to have the treatment since it was introduced a decade ago. With the long term effects not known, its use on children is blocked in some countries and a handful of us states. Butjonahs doctor is so convinced it is effective and safe for the first time he is allowing amy and our cameras to witness it. I think almost all of the problem with ect is misinformation, misunderstanding about what modern ect is, and continued perpetuation of the sensationalist portrayals of the past. Thats the problem. Nervous, amy, about seeing ect . I am curious cos i have wondered about it, but it is clearly not aversive to jonah. He doesnt fight it . Not at all. Jonah, are you able to lie down on the bed . Jonah, im going to start putting some of these sticky pads on you, if thats ok. Im going to clip this to your shirt here. 0k. Whats your name . Jonah lutz. When is your birthday . January 9th. Jonah has had around 260 ect sessions. The modern treatment is carried out under general anaesthetic, with Muscle Relaxa Nts to prevent violent convulsions. Were doing bilateral Electrode Placement at 20 . Doctors admit they dont know exactly how ect works. There is a lot of interesting new Neuro ImagingResearch Showing that ect actually reverses some of the Brain Problems in the major psychiatric illnesses. We dont know exactly why it works in people with autism and superimposed mood disorders, but we think it probably re regulates the circuits in the brain that are disregulated. Dr Kellner Will Administerjust under an amp of Electric Current in a series of very short pulses. Impedance is good. Treating at 20 . The current induces a seizure. Ect specialists believe this in some way resets the malfunctioning brain. Any thoughts, amy, now you have seen it . It is not scary. There is a little bit of movement. I have seenjonah have a real grand mal seizure before, and thats way, way scarier. Its kind of what i was expecting. The ect alleviates jonahs self injuring behaviour for up to ten days but it is not a cure. Its generally a very simple, safe, easy procedure like that. There are still medical experts that are very sceptical that ect does anything, particularly for children like jonah, and that its cruel as well. I think those are uneducated criticisms, and the way to counter them is to show people what modern ect is really like and show them the results with patients like jonah. What about long term . Some doctors say there can be memory loss. We know about long term effects, because there are patients with more typical indications for ect who have been getting ect for many years, some for decades, and there really are no cumulative adverse effects for the treatment, so it seems to be very safe, even to continue it for long periods. Worldwide, about a Million People have ect each year, most for severe, often life threatening depression. Around 1 are under 18. Memory loss is the main side effect, though the severity and even the definition is hotly disputed. Studies by ect doctors suggest most Memory Lapses are very short term, with Memory Function soon returning to normal. Those against ect have produced surveys showing more than half of patients suffer long term memory loss. My life has lots of black holes. When the person wakes up, they have all the signs, if they can speak, of traumatic brain injury. They may not know who they are, or where they are, or what has happened to them. A referee would stop a boxing match if the boxer got hit and looked like something coming out of ect because they come out concussed. In baltimore, sofija has been in the Kennedy Krieger neurobehavioural unit for seven months, and there has been little improvement. Parents chad and kaci are desperate to go ahead with ect. But dr wachtel wants to exhaust all other options first. Most of our kids who come here do not need ect, and people are rightfully cautious when it comes to children and children with special needs. Beyond that, ect is very much a treatment, rather than a cure. You get to the issue of needing ongoing ect, which can become inconvenient and expensive. If we can avoid that, then we would certainly like to offer something that is more manageable. We are not allowed to film in the secure unit, so i catch up with kaci after she visits sofija. How was it . It was a rough day. A rough day . Yeah. When i got there, she had been. I did even know what triggered it, she was in a big burst of behaviour. It is heartbreaking, and it scares me, because i want to be able to bring her home. I have cried a lot today, because i dont know how we can bring her home. When i told people i was coming to america to make a film about children that get ect, people are shocked. They say, thats barbaric, thats crazy. I wish that people who dont understand the need for ect could spend a couple of days with sofija. This is where we are. We need ect, and i have to have hope that it will be a Miracle For Sofija, because we need a miracle. A month later, sofijas doctors give the go ahead for ect. Probably after the third or fourth treatment, we started to see a marked improvement in her mood, and an additional 30 40 reduction, just in the sheer number of behaviours. And in september, having been in the unit all year, sofija is allowed home to live with her family. Sofija has been receiving intensive ect for six months now. The family have relocated to florida. The last time i visited the family, i couldnt go near sofija for my safety, and for her safety. Tonight will be quite an eye opener. Hello hello, fellas hi, sofija im chris. Hi hello great to finally meet you. I have come a long way. Whats his name, do you remember . Mr chris. You remember. I have a good eye are you happy . Are you excited . Sofija has had 33 sessions of ect so far. The family say they have seen huge improvement. Look at me, take a deep breath. I am excited when she has behaviours, they are much shorter, less intense. She used to have bursts of behaviour where she was aggressing and hurting herself for hours. Now it will be a matter of a few minutes and then she will calm down. Mother, i need you right now. You got me, girl. When i return the next morning, there is quite a surprise. One, two, three, four, five, six. Yeah, girl, you got it. One, two, six. There you go. Each weekday, sofija has School Lessons with a specially trained carer. My biggest concern was that she was going to lose quality of life, that she would have brain damage. Now shes back to loving doing multiplication and division. Who is that . A dog. Yeah. When she started ect, she was doing zero Academic Work at all. Good job but later that afternoon, six days after her last ect, sofijas behaviour deteriorates. Chad and her carer have to use approved Restraint Techniques to stop her injuring herself. Can i go to the beach . You know the answer to that. You said yes. No. What has sparked this . I couldnt tell you, ive taken any type of aggression, usually for one or two days prior to her usual schedule of ect. This is usually what we see. Every friday, sofija leaves home at 6am for her weekly ect session. Im going to be. Safe. At first, sofijas doctors were happy for us to film the ect procedure today, but then there was a change of heart. The reason they have given us is they are worried about how the procedure comes across on camera, so thats it, we cant film inside the hospital. Two hours later, sofija is on her way home. Got there within 45 minutes of treatment actually happening, and she was sitting up in bed talking to two nurses, asking for starburst chapstick for her lips. The only Memory Loss Sofija has had from ect is she forgets that the procedure happened. Keep going. Stop, stop. 0k, youve got to look that part. Its pretty dramatic. She is sharp as a tack. Shes absolutely sharp as attack. Ect for severely self injuring autistic children like sofija is still in very limited use. And without a long term scientific study, it remains highly controversial. Sofija, do you want to hold this . Right now, sofijas parents have no regrets. They have their daughter back home. Shes a joy. She brings usjoy and she loves life. She had zero quality of life. What about the thought of ect every single week for the rest of her life . Its overwhelming if i think about it, but what future does she have without it . My hope is she doesnt need it for the rest of her life. But at this point, i see it as a diabetic needing insulin. It keeps her alive. Literally, it keeps her alive. It makes it possible for us to be able to have her in our home living life with our family and enjoying sofija. I love the way she pops back in, thats great hello there. There is a Bank Holiday Weekend on the horizon, and im sure some of you are hoping, fingers crossed, that the weather isnt quite like what weve seen during the past week. Natures done its best to readdress the Rainfall Deficit so far this spring. The likes of northolt and skegness last week saw well over a months worth of rain in the space of seven days. Not quite as much in edinburgh, but this was still six times more than you saw through the whole of the month of april. So there is a bit of welcome news, i suppose, to those eyeing up the Bank Holiday Weekend that much of this week will not only be a good deal drier but also increasingly warm compared with the weekjust gone. We start the week with High Pressure to the east of us, low pressure to the west, so thats bringing some of the warmth on southerly winds, but this Weather Front out towards ireland causing a complication to a certain extent, with a bit of rain around to start monday, spreading into Western Parts of scotland. A few heavier bursts, but not as wet as it was for some of you on sunday. Much of the country dry, the best of the sunshine in the morning, sunshine turns hazy for some into the afternoon. But temperatures start to build, 0k, still in the low teens across the northern half of the country, much of england and wales, though, widely into the 20s, maybe even the mid 20s in the south east corner. That leaves us with a fine end to the day for the southern half of the uk, there will be some rain pushing from west to east as we go into monday evening across scotland, but that clears out into the north sea to tuesday, and for tuesday we start to see High Pressure building to the south. We are on the northern flank of it to begin with, so its coming off the atlantic, it wont be quite as warm as the air we saw on monday. With it, lots of low cloud around some western coasts and hills, there could be the odd spot of light rain or drizzle. Predominantly dry, th