This blog is dedicated to all electroshock and psychiatric survivors.
Today, most people including many health professionals are surprised to learn that electroshock (ECT) is still prescribed — many believe shock was banned after viewing the shock scene in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. As we know, electroshock has greatly increased and spread in many countries. According to a CBC report a few years ago, approximately 15,000 Canadians are shocked each year, and at least 100,000 in the United States. As we also know, women, particularly elderly women, are the main targets of electroshock — women over 60 and many in their 80s or 90s have been shocked in Canada. According to ECT statistics I obtained a few years ago from the Ontario and B.C. governments, two to three times more women than men have been shocked. The real but hidden reasons are sexism, ageism, ableism and mentalism shared by many psychiatrists and other doctors.
Whether young or old, the patient’s right to informed consent or to refuse treatment is routinely violated, the common effects of permanent memory loss and brain damage are omitted in most “patient information” consent forms. So-called “safe and effective ECT” is a cruel sham, another psychiatric lie since it always destroys memories, kills brain cells, and causes brain damage.12 In their official position papers, the Canadian Psychiatric Association and American Psychiatric Association still deny or greatly minimize the scientifically proven fact of ECT-caused brain damage. However, the comprehensive 2007 scientific study of psychologist-researcher Harold Sackeim clearly exposes the grim reality of permanent memory loss and brain damage, particularly among women and elderly survivors.3 These facts together with massive and permanent memory loss, loss of artistic or creative ability, and psychological trauma are some of the horrible truths about this barbaric psychiatric procedure. So-called “safe and effective ECT” is an absolute lie.
Despite its many life-threatening and disabling risks, electroshock is currently and widely prescribed in virtually all provincial and state hospitals and mental health centres in Canada, the United States, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and dozens of other allegedly “free and democratic” countries in Europe and Asia. In Toronto, for example, ECT is frequently prescribed in the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) — a notorious drug and shock mill — as well as general hospitals such as St. Michaels, Sunnybrook, and Women’s College Hospital, to name a few. Women diagnosed with depression, bipolar mood disorder, postpartum depression, schizophrenia and other fraudulent psychiatric diagnoses are targeted for ECT, they are suffering from alleged “mental disorders” as described in the unscientific and stigmatizing Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), psychiatry’s bible of “mental illness.” To compound this medical fraud, Medicare, including OHIP, covers ECT; every ECT procedure including recovery time lasts less than 30 minutes.
Over 10 years ago, I obtained some ECT statistics for both Ontario and British Columbia — they’re alarming. These government stats clearly show that approximately 70% of people shocked were women; at least 50% of women shocked were 65 and older in both provinces. Many were in their 80s, some in their 90s. In 2001 when B.C. psychiatrist Jaime Paredes formally complained about the disproportionately large number of elderly patients shocked in Vancouver’s Riverview Hospital, he was fired. In the mid-1990s, psychiatric nurse Stacie Neldaughter was not only fired but lost her nursing license after she refused to witness the disproportionately large number of women being shocked in a Madison,Wisconsin hospital operating room.
In short, two to three times more women than men are being shocked today; the main reasons are sexism, ageism, ableism, racism and mentalism in psychiatry, all officially denied of course. With the exception of Dr. Bonnie Burstow, no Canadian health professional gives a damn, and no Canadian psychiatrist or neurologist has the courage to publicly criticize shock or demand its abolition.4 The situation in the United States is more hopeful. For example, a number of dissident professionals such as psychiatrist Peter Breggin and clinical psychologist John Breeding have frequently and publicly denounced electroshock and shock doctors as inhumane, and have joined shock survivors and other critics and allies in urging a global ban. Breggin has also publicly and repeatedly criticized antidepressants and neuroleptics as brain-damaging and unethical.5
Shock Resistance
I now want to mention a few recent protests in the growing global anti-shock and antipsychiatry movements to ban electroshock, particularly in Canada. In 2008, the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault (CAPA) organized public protests with the demand and theme “STOP SHOCKING OUR MOTHERS AND GRANDMOTHERS” — in the next three years CAPA held a few other protests with the same message, including one in 2009 and another in 2010 at the international PSYCH-OUT Conference in Toronto, which soon sparked sister protests in Montreal, Ottawa and Cork, Ireland. Two years ago in 2015, CAPA held a successful anti-shock protest in front of Toronto’s Sheraton Centre Hotel where the American Psychiatric Association was holding its annual meeting — shock survivor Connie Neil and Ontario NDP-MPP Cheri DiNovo were two of several strong critics and speakers. Many similar protests, rallies, and marches were also held the same day in 30 cities in eight countries. May 16, 2015 was historic, because it was the first coordinated International Day of Protest Against Electroshock. Unfortunately, there was no international protest last year and none this year, but sister protests in Montreal and in Cork, Ireland continue.
It’s also worth mentioning 2005, another historic year when CAPA organized a successful four-day public forum on electroshock and psychiatric drugs titled “Enquiry Into Psychiatry,” which was held in the Council Chamber of Toronto City Hall. Over 60% of the shock survivors who testified were women. Here are a few excerpts of some of their personal and riveting testimony:
JACQUELINE: “I can’t recall experiences between 1995 and 1999… Pre-1995 has been wiped out for me by ECT. When I woke up after the first treatment, I didn’t know the year or what country I was in.”
WENDY: “After 14 months locked up in a psychiatric unit, I returned home to a family I had no memory of. My social work career and law [school] aspirations vanished. The intent of ECT is to kill brain cells.”
PAIVI: “[Electroshock caused an] excruciating headache. I thought my head was about to explode; it was so bad I was unable to eat for the next two days. [Electroshock] stunted my creativity, my imagination… I used to use imagination to paint… this extreme treatment has numbed my emotions. The numbed emotions have continued today. I’ve never been able to connect. It’s as if I’m looking through a window watching… I had to relearn how to write a sentence, how to write a paragraph, how to calculate multiplication tables, I’m not as quick or smart as I used to be… a part of my being has been wiped away. ECT should be banned absolutely, no question.”
CARLA: “I couldn’t memorize anymore. I played the piano. I would spend hours trying to memorize one page of music. I kept waiting for them [the memories] to come back and they didn’t… huge chunks of my life are missing. I had no idea what I was getting into. Nobody told me anything”.
SUE: “It was a traumatizing experience that still haunts me to this day… Electroshock is barbaric, unethical, torture. Electroshock must be stopped. [It’s] a crime against humanity.”6
Where Do We Go From Here — What To Do?
I want to offer three possible action proposals in our continuing struggle to abolish electroshock. The first two are practical and immediately needed.
First, let’s establish a SHOCK HOTLINE whose chief purpose is to provide accurate, reliable, and easy-to-understand information on electroshock freely available to psychiatric survivors, families and the general public. Too much of the current ‘ECT’ information in medical and psychiatric journals is too technical and misleading; ECT information in the corporate media and elsewhere is generally inaccurate and promotes a pro-shock bias — they also routinely omit anti-shock statements or criticism by survivors and other critics. The SHOCK HOTLINE should be controlled and independently staffed by women and men survivors, with supportive health professionals as back-up consultants, and run on a 24/7 basis. Free and available information should include basic details of the shock procedure, major effects and risks including memory loss and brain damage, non-medical community alternatives and referral sources.
Second, we need HEALING HOUSES, especially for women traumatized or disabled by shock. We obviously don’t need more psychiatric hospitals and mental health centres that re-traumatize women and threaten their health, sometimes their lives. Community-based HEALING HOUSES could provide essential emotional and social support based on a feminist anti-oppression and anti-racist model and personal empowerment, and provide referral information for community health professionals such as knowledgeable and supportive family doctors, social workers and crisis counselors. HEALING HOUSES should be primarily staffed and managed by women, including recovered shock survivors and crisis or trauma counselors. At least one HEALING HOUSE should be established in each major city — a pilot project is long overdue. Both the House and Hotline can be co-funded by city, provincial and/or national women’s organizations and individual donors.
Third, we need CLASS-ACTION LAWSUITS that directly and powerfully challenge electroshock as a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and human rights conventions or protocols of the United Nations including the Convention Against Cruel and Degrading Treatment and Torture. Although there have been two or three individual lawsuits in Ontario, including the historic “Mrs. T” case in 1983,7 what’s needed now are more national class-action human rights and civil rights cases in Canada, the United States and other countries.
Regarding shock resistance, three recent developments are worth mentioning. First, in September of 2017 a class action lawsuit in California was launched — it targets a number of shock machine manufacturers including Somatics and Mecta. Second, a month later in October, two Pennsylvania State representatives introduced a bill to ban the use of electroshock on children; the media recently revealed the shocking fact that 13 children five years of age and under had been electroshocked in Pennsylvania. The third development is the publication of The Other Mrs. Smith, a feminist novel by Dr. Bonnie Burstow, a widely-respected University of Toronto university professor, trauma specialist, antipsychiatry activist, MIA blogger and brilliant author. Her new book features a critical and powerful narrative of a woman shock survivor; this book together with the lawsuits promise to re-energize public resistance against electroshock. These major initiatives should stir more activism in the global anti-shock movement and arouse a growing demand to ban shock.
A few words of caution and comments regarding lawsuits are worth considering. Lawsuits brought by individual shock survivors or family relatives have a weak strategic and political impact; they can be easily discredited or dismissed by pro-shock doctors and psychiatrists including the American and Canadian psychiatric associations. Instead, a coordinated series of class action lawsuits launched and supported by several national civil rights and human rights advocacy organizations in different countries is a much more powerful and effective strategy in achieving abolition. On this point, I very much hope and support the current California class action — it promises to be a huge success and should stimulate more local, regional, national and/or international organizing and media coverage. It’s also important to urge class action lawsuits launched and sponsored by hundreds of women and many women’s and elderly (“seniors”) organizations. Successful class actions against electroshock can have profound educational and political impacts on medical school curricula, psychiatric practice and government health policy, and trigger more accurate and supportive reporting; they should also lead to greater public demands to abolish shock.
Unfortunately, electroshock has been legal for over 70 years in Canada, the United States and many other “free and democratic” western countries, despite the fact that 15%-20% or a smaller percent of doctors prescribe the procedure. Abolition of electroshock must be our sole and overriding objective. As shock survivors, antipsychiatry activists, and professional allies, that means organizing a lot of consciousness-raising public education; public rallies; town hall meetings; workshops; open public forums in colleges and universities with shock survivors, dissident health professionals and supportive academics as featured speakers; and nonviolent civil disobedience. It also means organizing state, provincial and national conferences organized by psychiatric survivors, supportive academics, dissident health professionals, and human rights advocates in major cities, and finding a few supportive and independent reporters and editors in the media — admittedly easier said than done.
As a movement strategy, electroshock must be clearly and frequently framed and understood as a blatant human rights violation — a profound and devastating crime against people’s health and lives. As many of us survivors and activists know all too well, electroshock is not, and never was, “safe and effective treatment,” a myth and lie routinely propagated by biological psychiatrists and their self-serving associations. Instead, it is and always was a direct and life-threatening assault on the brain and mind — an unethical and criminal violation of people’s human rights wherever it is administered.
Abolishing shock should be an urgent, top priority issue; a long-term struggle that has been extremely difficult and frustrating largely because psychiatry is tightly integrated with capitalism including Big Pharma, and all are inherently destructive and exploitative. Nevertheless, it’s time for bold and courageous and coordinated action; it’s time to organize locally, provincially, nationally, globally. At the 1982 International Conference For Human Rights and Against Psychiatric Oppression held in Toronto, I still vividly recall hearing sister survivor “Martha” stand up and shout, “Don’t agonize, organize!” — a powerful slogan worth repeating far and wide.
Let us remember that it is not only our mothers and grandmothers who are the main victims of this barbaric “treatment,” but our daughters, aunts, nieces, sisters, and elders who are also at great risk of being shocked, psychiatrized, traumatized and re-traumatized and stigmatized. And let us remember that they all need our understanding, empathy, and support in resisting electroshock; they need our support while being intimidated and threatened by male sexist, ageist and racist shock doctors; they need empowerment and our solidarity in refusing and bearing witness to this flagrant and continuing violation of human rights; they need to hear us speak out and become whistleblowers; they need to hear us denounce electroshock as a crime against humanity, a psychiatric crime against the minds and lives of brothers and sisters, particularly women and the elderly. To paraphrase the late Leonard Roy Frank, an awesome shock survivor, inspiring anti-shock activist, brilliant editor, and close friend, electroshock is a desecration of the soul, a betrayal of the human spirit. We must STOP SHOCK NOW. If not now, when?
Thank you Don.
Canadian orthomolecular psychiatrist Abram Hoffer (1917- 2009) was appalled by the dominance of the pharmaceutical industry, the inhumane treatment of patients, and the degrading levels to which healthcare can sink. He felt that patients today would do well to avoid psychiatry like the plague. A few weeks before his death signed off with: “All psychiatrists should be sent to Mars – they’d be better off and we’d be better off without them.”
Irish psychiatrist Michael Corry (1948 – 2010) opposed bio-psychiatry and psycho-pharmacology, and
campaigned for the abolition of ECT. Dr. Corry once said: “I’d like to drive a dagger through the heart of psychiatry, but I can’t find a heart.” (Someone commented: I doubt if you could find a brain either.)
Make sure you don’t miss the new website http://www.ECTstories.com. The stories speak for themselves. And for those who haven’t already done so look at http://www.ECTjustice.com about class actions suits.
I’m in Victoria, British Columbia and consulted Dr. Abram Hoffer in the early 1980s. He diagnosed me with “anxiety probably bordering on schizophrenia” and prescribed me liberal doses of niacin. I always thought he was kind of a quack but that’s a good quote of his – thanks for sharing that.
ECT is not brutal; it is now quite humane and surprisingly effective– truly improved and much safer than it used to be. ECT isn’t forced on people any more than chemical-based treatments. Whenever that happens, that would be foolish and criminal. A ban on ECT would also be foolish.
I have benefited greatly from ECT, and I happen to be male. I had to spend years trying this and that expensive new drug for my depression before my clinician (a female psychiatrist) agreed to let me try it. Sure, I was scared at first; Yes, it is invasive. But here’s the catch: It works beautifully for me and thousands of others, and now I am living practically drug-free.
Forced – yes it is forced. I took a benzo at a time of great stress. I was not depressed. Cold-turkeyed from the benzo when the stress was over. Got mild shakes. No one recognized benzo withdrawal. Diagnosed with agitated depression. Medicated to insanity. Actually diagnosed with dementia. Went to a psych facility for help in withdrawing from pharmaceuticals. Seized and forcibly shocked – considered an excellent candidate for ECT. I would have been an excellent candidate for supervised drug withdrawal. My life has been destroyed. I take no drugs and I am out for revenge.
You are naive if you think that chemical-based treatments are not forced on people – they are forced on hundreds of thousands or more around the world every day. ECT is also forced in many other countries, even though it’s not allowed to be forced in the USA thanks to Peter Breggin and others. As for ECT, it induces a seizure in the brain. This can not be considered anything but a violent act. We know that uncontrolled seizures damage your brain, which is why there are such things as anti-seizure medications.
I’m glad it worked for you, but millions report long-term brain damage from ECT, including long- and short-term memory loss. Many people report being suicidal after ECT due to forgetting important events in their life like their weddings, births of children, important childhood events, etc. Reviews of ECT show that such benefits as do occur are usually short term, and such damage as occurs is usually long term. The fact that a few lucky people like yourself benefit without serious damage doesn’t change the fact that for most people, the risks far outweigh the benefits.
Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and the Recovery Movement are just a continuation of the Eugenics Movement. We must take whatever steps are necessary to stop them.
Could you share with me what the “recovery movement” is? And what’s your beef with psychotherapy?
The Recovery Movement is based on ideas taken from drug addiction treatment. It was wrong there because it is based on the idea that the addict suffers from a moral defect. People who are treated with dignity and respect and given the chance to develop and apply their abilities, are very unlikely to develop a problem with drugs or alcohol. Addiction is not a moral defect, it is a common result of abuse.
But the concept is also used to deal with incest survivorship and all other types of survivorship.
Recovery is a way of shifting the blame back to the survivor, turning the experience of injustice into a medical problem and a self improvement project.
And Psychotherapy is just more of the same, a con, a way of turning injustice into a problem with the survivor. This started with Freud, betraying his female patients. It continues right to this day when the therapist lets the client talk themselves out, but they re not on the client’s side, they are on the side of the parents, and of our society.
They teach people to live in an unjust society without complaint. They make the client’s anger into the problem to be solved, rather than the injustice of which it is about.
So long as we have Recovery or Psychotherapy, we will always be abusing survivors and we will always have psychiatry, psych drugs, and involuntary treatment.
We must adopt a strict middle-finger, one verbal warning only policy with Psychiatry and Recovery.
https://www.amazon.com/Against-Therapy-J-Moussaieff-Masson/dp/1567510221/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1512693259&sr=8-1&keywords=against+therapy
Thank-you for this article.
As I have stated previously, I believe it is unethical that neurologists and other medical professionals have failed to lobby against ECT and try to have it banned. Absolute cowardice.
Doctors with clout and credibility need to speak out against the APA and CPA’s pro- ECT lies and propaganda.
They won’t because psychiatric iatrogenesis is very profitable for all in the medical community and because one of the roles of the psychiatric industry is covering up the easily recognized iatrogenesis of the incompetent mainstream medical doctors.
I agree completely. Shock is very big in Florida. Also, there was a lot of shock in Virginia when I was living there. These bastards should not be allowed to get away with their “safe and effective” baloney. I hope that people are paying attention who can help us get some kind of real action campaign off the ground and going on the matter. On one hand you get the, “They’re still doing that?” line, and on the other this, “It’s a safe and effective treatment” argument. I guess that means part of the population was asleep. They are “still doing that”, and it is neither “safe” nor “effective”. Electricity induced epileptic fits aren’t any more “safe and effective” than any other kind of epileptic fit. We need to stop this kind of thing now.
“Safe and effective” was the verdict in Psychology 100B at the University of Victoria. I wrote to the prof but never heard back from her.
Her’s Don in action – https://www.thestar.com/news/2007/09/28/5800_bill_for_stats_shocks_researcher.html
Mr. Weitz, I truly am amazed at all the time, work, energy, and passion you have put into speaking out about this insane practice. It is disheartening to look at the decades ppl like yourself, Leonard Roy Frank (55 years), and Peter Breggin (55 years?) have dedicated to try to have shock abolished only to be undermined by pro- ECT propaganda and fake science supporting brain damage while rejecting the real science (janis studies for example, autopsy studies) and publishing crap by ppl like Chucky Kellner (Core) and Richard Weiner, both with ties to ECT manufacturers.
I don’t think many ppl know ECT still exists or they have heard it is new and improved and safe and effective based on the stories told by obviously brain injured ppl like Kitty Dukakis. Literature reviews by Bentall and Read have shown ECT is not safe or effective and that “its use cannot be scientifically justified”.
Wouldn’t a psychiatrist just claim that the reason that ECT is inflicted on women more than men is because women more commonly suffer from depression than men do?
I’m an ECT survivor myself. I developed frontal lobe epilepsy which cleared when the ECT stopped. There were hundreds of treatments. That David Foster Wallace went through this makes me feel a little less ashamed.
Yes, they would likely use this excuse. That is what they are good at. Causing damage and disability and coming up with excuses…
“Hundreds” of “treatments”?? How awful. What was the brilliant excuse for that?
Interesting you feel ashamed- like an innocent rape victim feels ashamed- the ones who should feel ashamed and realize they are guilty of abuse and torture are the lunatics administering this torture/TBI. Ghouls. Idiots. They belong in jail being electroshocked to combat their delusions that they are “doctors” helping people.
It is appalling that the brilliant, sensitive David Foster Wallace “went through this” (twice- with it impairing his memory) since his distressed state appears to have been related to long term psychiatric drugging and drug withdrawal which kicked him into some kind of hell nothing worked to reverse. His idiot psychiatrists “final” intervention was a series of electrical injuries and grand mal seizures! Yep, brilliant plan…
Psychiatry killed that lovely man.
DFW had ECT twice in total or two series of ECT?
Two series- one in 1988, which left his memory impaired, and one series of 12 in 2007.
There is an article on MIA about Wallace.
Thank you. Could you provide a link to the article? I’d be fascinated to read it. I’ve written a book called A Terror Way Beyond Falling in honour of him.
I don’t know that we can blame DFW’s depression on psychiatric medication. Why, then, was he on antidepressants in the first place?
Studies have shown long term antidepressant use is tied to worse outcomes and an often permanent, treatment resistant “illness”, which “doctors” then “treat” with brain damage -ECT!
The article suggests Wallace was in severe drug withdrawal when he ended his life. Once the regular brain transmitters are perturbed by drugs that create brain changes, patients often deteriorate or are forced to stay on the toxins for life, or when nothing helps, left in a state of mental anguish.
Yes, Wallace had some anxiety and depression, but drugging him for decades and injuring his brain didn’t work so well…
Francesca, I think you’re fabulous. As truth says, the shame is for those who compel innocent people into an injurious, demoralizing system for no real reason other than to keep their paychecks coming. It might be a while before you’re free of whatever seeped into you during your involvement with those voracious parasites and can feel yourself as the whole, independent being you entered life as, but that is what you are and always will be.
Don, you are a true warrior. Excellent article with great suggestions for meaningful resistance. How you are able to sustain your deep compassion and commitment for so many years challenges me to keep trying to do more. In the words of Justin Dart, “lead on.”
Love you my insulin brother.
Ron
Don,I would love to get involved with any of the projects you mentioned. I will contact you offline.
I am amazed at how widespread this procedure is, and yet, most people assume it is no longer done. Also, most who are unfamiliar with how psychiatry works assume that shock is somehow “modernized” and therefore, couldn’t possibly be as bad as witnesses are saying. Survivor accounts are discredited or we’re told, “But you must have been an exception!” I’m never quite sure what the best response is when people say that.
I think the year was 1995 or 1996 when I witnessed a 96-year-old man, fellow inmate, receive electroshock at Newton-Wellesley Hospital’s inpatient psych unit.
Julie, I would be very interested in discussing this further with you. I can be reached at http://www.goodbyepie.com if you ever have a free moment. Thanks.
https://www.madinamerica.com/2013/09/temptation-certainty-david-foster-wallace-suicide-psychiatric-drug-withdrawal/
Francesca, hope this link works.
Thank you, truth.
Don, I’ve got a church with lots of largely unused rooms that is looking into, and expressing interest, in possibly letting me start up a Healing House/Soteria House of sorts, that can be run out of that church. I would love to find information on how to start up a Healing House, including finding the funding to do such a thing.
Thank you for writing this Mr. Weitz.
Support for shock survivors is 70 years overdue.
Dear psychiatric reform movement– ECT doesn’t have to be abolished to provide support to those injured by it.
I have been incredibly disheartened by the anti-psychiatry and psychiatric reform movements’ willingness to write about the dangers and abuses of ECT, but not have a shred actionable advice or resources for those newly disabled by ECT.
People are dying!
I help admin a shock survivors support group and newly injured woman who joined this summer committed suicide. She was so terrified at what had happened to her mind and was trapped in an abusive family situation by disability. I can still hear the fear in her voice from our the last conversation.
I couldn’t help her. I had no resources to provide, and as someone damaged by ECT myself was limited in what emotional support I could. Her young daughter will never know her mother thanks to ECT and incorrectly treated postpartum. She didn’t choose this treatment. Her doctor refused to give her any other help her if she stopped.
Those of us injured by often become suicidal, some of us make attempts, others like the woman I mentioned, follow through. I myself spent almost a decade wanting to die and probably would have committed suicide had I not gotten cognitive testing that proved I wasn’t imaging or fabricating brain damage. The battle doesn’t stop there. Few people will attribute it to ECT. I seem normal so I get no breaks for my slip-ups, and getting a job has been a nightmare. I am ostracized and irrelevant to the rest of the world as a woman with brain damage.
ECT has been legal for 70 years and what has been done for survivors? WE NEED HELP NOW! Shock survivors are doing what we can to help others but we are sorely limited in what we can do– most of us need help ourselves.
You are absolutely right. I have been working on the HELP aspect for some time and will contact you by email. There is absolutely nowhere for ECT survivors to go for help.
I am hoping the DK lawfirm is successful with its class action lawsuit against the manufacturers of these devices of torture. I hope the lawsuits extend outside California and go nation wide, resulting in massive payouts that bankrupt the manufacturers.
Better still would be seeing massive personal injury lawsuits against ECT doctors and lawsuits involving the hospitals (like the Mayo Clinic and McLeans) bankrupting them
all and revealing the destruction and death they have caused by electrocuting innocent victims whose mistake was seeing a psychiatrist.
Thanks go out to wonderful people working to have ECT discredited and abolished- people like the late Leonard Roy Frank, Don Weitz, Peter Breggin, Linda Andre, Jane Rice, Lauren Tenney, Deborrah Schwartzkopf, Mary Maddock, John Breeding, Phil Hickey, Niall McLaren … Along with researchers like Dr. Bentall and Dr. Read and Lucy Johnstone…(I know I have missed several people)
Their humanity and intelligence and compassion and integrity stands in contrast to the qualities of “doctors” who have carved out a career promoting or administering ECT. I have the most profound contempt for people like Max Fink, Howard Sackheim, David Healy, Sarah Lisanby, Chucky Kellner, Richard Weiner, Ed Shorter….and any other delusional “doctor” delivering repetitive electrical damage and their accompanying seizures to the vulnerable patients who fall into their clutches.
The FDA deserves condemnation for its failure to ban ECT given the evidence it was presented with throughout the decades. How many more people and families need to be destroyed before this violent assault on the mind, body, and soul is halted?
We see repentant psychiatrists who finally admit that psychiatric drugs have been sickening and killing people. When will the shock docs come clean about their crimes against humanity?
Thank you for this article Don. I have noticed that most of the big names in ECT seem to be men. In the early days of ECT perhaps there weren’t that many women psychiatrists, but I would have thought there were more nowadays.