Calling Nurse Ratched.
A doctor testified today that electroshock therapy might be an effective treatment for a depressed man accused of plotting a terror attack at JFK Airport.
Kareem Ibrahim, 65, who is awaiting trial for allegedly planning to blow up aviation fuel pipelines at the New York airport, has been refusing to eat and his weight has plummeted to 114 pounds.
At a court hearing today, Dr. Karl Bernhard, a federal prison hospital physician, testified that Ibrahim was suffering from “self-inflicted starvation and dehydration.”
The doctor told Judge Dora Irizarry in Brooklyn federal court that “electroconvulsive therapy” might be one way to treat Ibrahim’s continual depression, resistance to eat or drink, and “oppositional behavior disorder.”
“Mr. Ibrahim is not going along with the program in general,” Bernhard testified.
Electoconvulsive therapy, also know as electroshock therapy, is a controversial treatment for psychiatric disorders that played a central role in the film adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
Electrical impulses are used to shock anesthetized patients in an effort to induce seizures as a way of treating various mental health ailments.
Ibraihim, who appears gaunt and frail, had been taking 40 milligrams of Prozac and eight bottles of Boost energy drink a day, but now sporadically drinks Ensure, a nutritional drink, and eats some solid food, mostly toast and tuna fish.
Bernhard, who treated Ibrahim at the prison medical center in Devens, Mass., said the accused terrorist was also refusing to drink water and had developed a diabetic condition.
The judge said she was concerned that Ibrahim’s resistance to eat or drink might be an intentional plan “to avoid going to trial.”
“At some point it becomes malingering,” Irizarry said, cautioning the native of Trinidad that if he continues she would begin the trial without him.
Ibrahim was arrested in 2007 for allegedly conspiring with three other extremists to plan the attack. His trial is scheduled to begin in May.
mmaddux@nypost.com