The Fifth Estate

Treatment or torture (46x9)

Air date: Mar 04, 2021

One of the greatest Hollywood movies ever is “One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest”, starring Jack Nicholson as a man who trades his term in prison for time in a mental institution because he believes it will be easier for him. Instead, he finds himself trapped in a psychiatric ward where patients are bullied and abused by staff using physical intimidation, massive doses of medication and invasive treatments such as electro-shock. The film was styled as a dark comedy. But over the years, The Fifth Estate has done a number of investigations which reveal that what's gone on in some Canadian psychiatric hospitals is no laughing matter. Tonight’s episode shows another troubling example we’ve uncovered. “Treatment or Torture” is the twisted tale of bizarre experiments in the 1970s and 80s at two Ontario hospitals for the criminally insane. The experiments were creations of influential psychiatrists at the time. In particular, the so-called research led by Dr. Elliot Barker of the Oak Ridge Psychiatric Hospital at Penetanguishene, Ontario, whose radical ideas eventually were replicated at the St. Thomas Psychiatric Hospital in St. Thomas, Ontario. Incredibly, Barker's plan was to send criminally-insane male sex offenders from Oak Ridge to direct the treatment given to female psychiatric patients at St. Thomas, literally a case of inmates running the asylum. Tonight you'll meet the controversial Canadian psychiatrist who believed he had a secret cure for psychopaths and the patients, both men and women, who experienced that real-life “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.” In our second story of tonight’s episode, Vik Adhopia shows us how Canadian women who believe a birth control implant led to sometimes years of extensive pain, are fighting for a measure of justice and compensation. Thousands of Canadian women received the implant called Essure, which was marketed as a permanent birth control device. It was