Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people who have undergone electroconvulsive therapy


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. postdlf (talk) 18:42, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

List of people who have undergone electroconvulsive therapy

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Listcruft. Per WP:LISTN has not been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources. Per WP:STAND has no lead; and indeed no sources that are used to show NOTABILITY of group. each person in list has their own source with none repeated Jytdog (talk) 04:51, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. NorthAmerica1000 05:14, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Behavioral science-related deletion discussions. NorthAmerica1000 05:14, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. Jytdog (talk) 05:21, 13 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete. I could not find a source that indicates that the list is notable. Axl ¤ [Talk] 09:29, 13 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep It only takes a moment to find a source which lists famous cases as a group, e.g. USA Today. More substantial works such as Shock Therapy: A History of Electroconvulsive Treatment in Mental Illness naturally list famous patients such as Ernest Hemingway and Sylvia Plath. Andrew D. (talk) 10:07, 13 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep ECT as a medical treatment has been performed for many years, and a list of patient outcomes from the procedure is a good thing to have for science. --Mark v1.0 (talk) 15:13, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * A small series of anecdotes (with many self-reports) tells us nothing scientific. Horrible.  On top of that, Mark v1.0 has added pretty much only people who believe that ECT damaged them.  This article is looking more like the subject of WP:ADVOCACY and in any case, very prone to be abused in that way, per WP:COATRACK.  All the more reason to delete. Jytdog (talk) 15:20, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Jytdog noted that I only added negative reviews of ECT to the positive reviews. I wrote of what I know of, sorry about that.--Mark v1.0 (talk) 16:36, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Jytdog started this request for deletion when people who did not have good outcomes from ECT were added and today continues to edit the article in favor of his point of view by removing the description "psychiatric survivor" and "elecroshock survivor".https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_people_who_have_undergone_electroconvulsive_therapy&diff=637908569&oldid=637906735 --Mark v1.0 (talk) 20:47, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think the above discussion is mostly irrelevant as to whether this list should be kept. Bear in mind that ECT narratives have almost always served a polemical purpose for or against the procedure. The list is likely to reflect this and that most such narratives, at least until about the mid-1990s, were anti-ECT; but this fact could be contextualised for readers in a properly constructed lead paragraph. The list should not be presented in such a way as to reflect on the efficacy of ECT, however. That is more properly discussed in the main article for that subject. You're dealing primarily with the role of pathographies in the public debate about ECT. As to the inclusion of terms such as 'psychiatric survivor', this should be determined principally by how reliable sources describe these individuals. FiachraByrne (talk) 00:20, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Weak Delete I'm somewhat torn because I may be somewhat out of the mainstream in my belief that MOST list articles should be deprecated in favor of categories. I would say that the contents of this list should be converted to Category:People who have undergone electroconvulsive therapy, and to the extent that famous patients are discussed in books such as Shock Therapy mentioned by above, that can be incorporated as prose into the main article Electroconvulsive therapy (e.g. Electroconvulsive_therapy).  0x0077BE  ( talk ·  contrib ) 19:04, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The category that you suggest doesn't exist and deleting this page won't make that happen - a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. In any case, it is explicit policy that we don't delete lists to favour categories (or vice versa). They both have their points and, where the matter is somewhat controversial, lists are superior because it's feasible to back up the entries with citations.  Andrew D. (talk) 19:19, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think you are missing the point. It is not uncommon in deletion discussions to suggest that action such as a merge or redirect be taken. The page you link even specifies that in some CfD discussion the result is to create a list article rather than have a category. What I'm saying is that the only disadvantage of going to a category that I see is the lack of provision for references (which can be handled by including references on the subject's page directly), and I don't see this list as being particularly nor do I see the group as being particularly notable. Either way, it's only a weak delete vote, and I've given the caveat that I'm much more likely to vote delete in a list discussion anyway. 0x0077BE  ( talk ·  contrib ) 19:27, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm missing your point. Someone could do all this work of deletion and then creating categories and adding citations to recreate the list in another format.  But what would have been achieved by this activity?  Wouldn't we just be back where we started?  What would be the point of this? Andrew D. (talk) 20:34, 13 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep Just for context, I created this page on 8 March 2011 from content that was then part of the Electroconvulsive therapy article - diff here. The main ECT article was overlong and lists such as these, like many in popular culture article-sections, can at times grow to excessive lengths. If this list were to be deleted, I think it quite likely that many editors would argue for the inclusion of its content, in whole or in part, into the main ECT article. As to why it should be kept, the narratives of many of the individuals listed are discussed in sources that treat of the cultural history of ECT. has already cited perhaps the most significant recent study above, Shock Therapy: A History of Electroconvulsive Treatment in Mental Illness (quite a polemical work which argues strongly for the benefits of ECT, not that that is highly relevent here) and one could also add  (a very nice and balanced US study, the full text of which is readily available through a google search), amongst several others. The article obviously should have a contextualising lead paragraph that indicates the significance of these narratives in the public debate over the use of ECT. It is a misnomer to argue for the inclusion or deletion of the list based upon its supposed scientific content. It really doesn't have any. The list is mostly of significance in terms of the history of the public debate about ECT and the way such personal narratives have been used to delegitimise or, more rarely, legitimise this particular therapy. Most of the list will be comprised of people who criticise the treatment and that, I think, accurately reflects much of the public debate on ECT, at least until recent times. Incidentally, one omission from the list of a proponent of ECT is the psychologist Martha Manning. FiachraByrne (talk) 23:56, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.