Use of Electroconvulsive Therapy Without Patient’s Consent Rises

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FromĀ The Irish News: Although the use of ECT has been steadily decreasing internationally, the use of ECT in Northern Ireland has significantly increased over the past two years. There was a 29 percent rise in the number of patients involuntarily given ECT between 2015 and 2016.

“There are also several prominent physicians who argue that ECT can have severe side effects.

One such physician is Dr John Read, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of East London, who has published numerous reviews of the research on the efficacy and safety of ECT.

Speaking to The Irish News, Dr Read claimed that there is ‘absolutely no evidence’ that ECT has any lasting benefits, compared to placebo treatment.

‘There are many studies showing that ECT causes long lasting brain damage, in the form of memory loss, for a significant proportion of recipients. ECT zealots continue to deny this,’ he said.

‘The continued use of this procedure suggests that psychiatry is not an evidence-based profession.'”

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Nice to see an article that interviews John Read and doesnā€™t then produce a psychiatrist to contradict everything he says. And nice too to see a picture of John Read instead of Jack Nicholson (although they rather spoil it with a stock photo of a man in a white coat). Butā€¦.
    Although the statistics are true (I will take their word for the latest ones) they have presented them in a slightly misleading way, comparing an unusually low year with an unusually high year (blip or beginning of a trend?)
    It didnā€™t mention this in the article but Northern Ireland is the only part of the British Isles (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic) that still allows psychiatrists to use ECT on patients who are categorised as ā€œcapableā€ and have decided they donā€™t want ECT. Neither did it mention the fact that in Northern Ireland ECT is almost always bilateral.

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  2. Shock is not a treatment. Even those people who supposedly gave their consent to this barbaric abuse were coerced into giving that consent. In America older women who’ve lost a loved one seem to be the main targets of these quacks who masquerade as real doctors. This bogus “treatment” costs lots of money and makes lots of money for the shock quacks who promote it.

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