The federal government has paid $100,000 in an out-of-court settlement to a person who was subjected to brainwashing experiments conducted throughout in the 1950s and 1960s at McGill University in Montreal.

Documents recently tabled in Parliament that list the out-of-court settlements the federal government paid out over the past year include a new settlement for a “depatterning” case. The documents have withheld the name of the recipient.

“Depatterning” was an experimental medical process that involved putting patients into a drug-induced sleep, followed by massive electric shock treatments. Lasting effects included severe memory loss, depression, anxiety and the loss of the ability to read. The process left some patients in a child-like state, effectively erasing their personalities.

In 1994, the federal government compensated 77 victims of “depatterning” brainwashing experiments carried out at the Allan Memorial Institute at McGill between 1950 and 1965.

But while those former patients were compensated, the Canadian Press reported in 2007 that hundreds of others had been left out of that initial settlement – denied compensation because their symptoms were not considered severe enough.

In 2004, a federal appeal court had overruled that decision and awarded one former patient $100,000. Then, in a high-profile 2007 case, a Montreal woman named Janine Huard launched a lawsuit of her own against the federal government. That suit was quickly settled for $100,000.

Among the experimental treatments used on patients at the institute was “psychic driving” — a sort of personality reprogramming using pre-recorded messages played repeatedly through headphones.

In some cases, patients were forced to listen for up to 16 hours of recordings a day while in drug-induced comas. Sessions often involved patients being dosed with hallucinogenic drugs, amphetamines or barbiturates.

The Cold War-era experiments began after the director of the Allan Memorial Institute at the time, Dr. Ewen Cameron (now deceased), was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency to study brainwashing techniques in 1950.

The experiments were jointly funded by the CIA and the Canadian government. The CIA launched them after U.S. prisoners returned from the Korean War; the Agency believed some of them had been brainwashed by foreign powers with advanced mind control techniques.

The experiments were part of a larger CIA program called MK-ULTRA, which included giving LSD to U.S. prison inmates without their knowledge. Details of the program were revealed through a 1977 U.S. Senate committee investigating the program.

Patients had gone to see Dr. Cameron voluntarily to treat various mental health issues like schizophrenia or depression, not realizing they were going to be subjected to experiments. When the experiments became public knowledge, victims said they felt like they had been used as guinea pigs and that it had ruined their lives.