PROBE INTO LAKE ALICE TREATMENT

Published: 6:01PM Tuesday October 16, 2001

Leading psychiatrists say an investigation into a doctor's involvement in giving shock treatment to children at Lake Alice Hospital must be treated with urgency.

The government has apologised and paid $6.5 million in compensation to 95 patients for the treatment they received at the hospital, near Marton, in the 1970s.

The patients say they were given shock treatment and injections of the drug paraldehyde as punishment while in the hospital's children's unit in the 1970s.

Doctor Selwyn Leeks, who ran the unit, now has a practice in Melbourne and the Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria is investigating his work at Lake Alice.

An Australian medical tribunal is investigating the allegations.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) alleged that Doctor Selwyn Leeks was involved in the shock treatment while running a children's psychiatric unit at Lake Alice Hospital near the New Zealand city of Palmerston North.

Leeks allegedly used injections of the drug paraldehyde and electric shocks to modify the behaviour of children at the facility, according to the RANZCP.

"The practices alleged can only be described as severe child abuse and torture," chair of the college's faculty of child and adolescent psychiatry Louise Newman said.

A spokeswoman for the Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria (MPBV) confirmed that the matter was under investigation.

"The board is concerned and is investigating to see if further action is required," the spokeswoman said.

NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark and Health Minister Annette King earlier this month apologised to 95 former patients at Lake Alice Hospital.

The former patients were awarded a total $6.3 million to settle a class action over the matter.

Leeks, who now runs a practice in the Melbourne suburb of Cheltenham, has confirmed he was involved in the use of shock treatment on patients during his tenure at Lake Alice Hospital.

Initially he said his legal advisers had told him not to talk on the issue, but he later said there was nothing inappropriate in use of the shock treatment and that the drug, paraldehyde, was mostly administered by his nursing staff.

Leeks said the shock treatment was used for mood disorders and schizophrenia while the drug was used to temper "uncontrollable" behaviour.

"I'm loath to say much else," he said.

He said the previous NZ government was not prepared to agree to

the payouts to patients.

"I can only say the previous government were going to contest it," he said.

RANZCP executive director Craig Patterson said his organisation

demanded the highest clinical and ethical standards of its members,

and would do all that was legally possible to ensure those standards were upheld.

"The prime minister and health minister in New Zealand have seen

fit to apologise to and to compensate the former patients of the service operated by Dr Leeks," Patterson said.

"And yet, despite previous appeals by the college, no investigation into the role played by this doctor in the alleged practices has been successfully completed."

In 1977, the then NZ chief ombudsman Guy Powles found a 15-year-old boy who received shock therapy while at the hospital was caused "a grave injustice" by decisions made by officers of the department of health and social welfare.

Craig Patterson from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists says the inquiry is needed urgently so the college can decide whether he should be expelled.

Patterson says the College has high ethical and clinical standards and if the allegations are true then it wants to take action.

© AAP