In an attempt to treat those patients diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia, Bender employed electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) after finding that the practice was successful in other applications. ECT was used in an experiment in Paris on children and adolescents in 1940 and showed positive results. In 1947 Bender conducted ECT on 98 children diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia under the age of twelve years. Although only a few of the patients were considered to be in remission of schizophrenia, Bender considered the treatment overall beneficial to all but two or three of the other patients.