ST. PAUL (Minnesota) - THE court order authorising electroshock treatments for Ray Sandford says that when he arrived at a psychiatric hospital early last year, he was 'grossly psychotic' and violent toward staff and other patients.

Mr Sandford, who has been declared legally incompetent, said he agreed to the treatments at first, but after more than 40 of them he finds it hard to remember names and other things. His bipolar disorder is under control, he says, and he should have the right to say no.

The court disagrees, but advocates of the mentally ill who call themselves the 'mad pride' movement have rallied to his defense.

'This is worse than waterboarding,' said David Oaks, executive director of MindFreedom International, who led about two dozen people in a rally at the Minnesota Capitol this month to draw attention to Sandford's case. 'Offer somebody the choice between waterboarding or forced electroshock and a lot of our people who know what it is will say waterboarding.'

The 'Mad Pride' movement includes groups and individuals that seek not only an end to forced treatment, but to redefine their conditions as something to be respected instead of diseases to be suppressed.

Most members of MindFreedom International are 'psychiatric survivors' who have been abused by the mental health establishment, said Al Galves, a MindFreedom board member and psychologist from Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Mr Sandford's caregivers persuaded a judge to order electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) plus a combination of anti-psychotic drugs. 'I just don't like the idea of them being able to force these treatments,' said Mr Sandford, 55, who has been in and out of mental hospitals for nearly four decades.

MindFreedom, based in Eugene, Oregon, opposes involuntary psychiatric treatment and all use of ECT, but mental-health professionals say ECT is safe and effective in many severely depressed patients for whom drugs have failed.

'It's not torture,' said Dr. William McDonald, a psychiatry professor at Emory University who chairs an American Psychiatric Association committee on ECT. 'That's a completely unfair characterization. It's inflammatory.' Representatives of Mr Sandford's legal guardian, Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota, mostly declined to talk about his case because of privacy rules. Eric Jonsgaard, senior director of its guardianship program, said ECT was the court's decision, not the agency's.

'Frankly, here's a man with capacity issues who doesn't understand all that this is doing to his life,' Mr Jonsgaard said. -- AP