ECT

The #FDAStopTheShockDevice petition has received over 2,200 signatures and 800+ comments. A more thorough analysis of those comments is forthcoming, however, we wanted to offer a glimpse of what people shared. The sixth, seventh, and eighth most common words used in the comments submitted through the petition were "damage," "barbaric" and "torture." We must continue the fight to make sure that the FDA hears the people who will be adversely affected by the proposed rule if it becomes an order. There is still a small window of time for you to sign the petition and leave a comment to the FDA.

In a recent commentary, University of Toronto historian Edward Shorter laments the efforts of people like myself in states like Texas who have successfully put limits on shocking children in order to induce grand mal convulsions. His argument is that we who have fought against this are denying children a benevolent medical treatment. In order to understand why Shorter’s plea to use electroshock on children is so egregious, we need to know what it does to children’s brains, which means a look at the science.

A major electroconvulsive therapy case that was on the eve of trial just settled to the satisfaction of the injured ECT patients and the DK Law Group, LLP. As an expert in the case I am pleased to report that this is a significant victory. The evidence secured has paved the way for more suits against ECT manufacturers that are on the way.

Lou Reed’s “Kill Your Sons,” about his ECT as a 17-year-old, gives voice to an event that majorly radicalized him to distrust authorities. Lou’s talents enabled his rage over his ECT to be transformed into the kind of art that deeply touched society’s outcasts and victims of illegitimate authority. But such trauma often only destroys.

ECT, or shock treatment as it's sometimes called, is a controversial topic. Adherents describe it as safe and effective; opponents condemn its use as damaging and ineffective. But it is still widely used in the US and in other countries. After shock treatment, some clients do appear to be less depressed, but this phenomenon has been interpreted differently by ECT's proponents and opponents. Proponents claim that the ECT treatments have clearly alleviated the depression. Opponents claim that the apparent improvement is an example of post-concussion euphoria, and that the effects are short-lived. My purpose in this article is to examine the evidence that ECT "is highly effective."

Garth Daniels, a 39-year-old Melbourne man, has been shackled for 110 days and forced to undergo ECT 94 times at three times a week against his will. Last year, his family asked me to provide a second opinion on Garth’s case. As predicted, my recommendations against continued ECT were quickly dismissed by the hospital. There are critically important issues at stake in this case.

Through all the years that I was a mental patient, my parents were excellent advocates who constantly questioned what the docs were doing, even though my own faith in psychiatry was unwavering.... Amazingly, what cured me was not some type of “treatment,” but getting away from drugs and therapy.

It is often not appreciated by the individuals receiving electrically induced convulsions that any gains they receive from the procedure will almost certainly be short-lived, and that the "treatment" will need to be repeated more or less indefinitely at intervals of about a month. Case studies can be helpful and informative, but they tell us little or nothing on the general questions of safety and efficacy.

After spending the entire litigation vehemently denying that brain injury was even a possible result of ECT, Somatics, LLC has now issued a warning of "permanent brain damage" in its new risk disclosures. We think this makes the case of anyone who underwent ECT within the statute of limitations MUCH stronger.

Peer support pioneer and MindFreedom board president Celia Brown discusses what it means to be a 'survivor of psychiatry' and the importance of human connection, and human rights in mental healthcare.

We have reached the point where we have to ask: Is psychiatry doing anything useful for society, or has it degenerated to an insatiable, high-cost and self-sustaining rentier gorging on the public purse? The Australian Productivity Commission is holding an enquiry into mental health; it is to be hoped that this will assist in the process of uncovering the truth.

On Saturday May 16, 2015, there will be demonstrations protesting shock treatment in many cities around the world. This will be a historic event for our movement for human rights in psychiatry. I don’t know of any other time our movement has carried out such a coordinated action on this scale.

Upon review of hundreds of the "informed" consent forms received from those suffering permanent cognitive impairment after receiving ECT, the overwhelming majority do not provide the patient with any form of disclosure that "brain damage is a risk that can potentially occur from ECT, whether performed properly or not."

Forty years after I had first been admitted to the hospital, I was ready to confront my past. So, I sent for my hospital records, and I read them. As an experienced clinician, I recognized immediately what the doctors hadn’t been able to see in 1960: my problem wasn’t ‘schizophrenia’ but PTSD, connected with incest.

I have long been concerned with the way society responds to people who come back from war. Veterans are routinely funneled into psychiatry’s grasp. Over the decades, some people who fought in wars have shared with me their experiences of being psychiatrized upon return from war. Sometimes these experiences included veterans being stripped of their second amendment rights, and a host of other constitutional, civil, and human rights violations as they began to be forced into complying with psychiatric regimens, and on several occasions this included veterans being subjected to electroshock.

In an internet email discussion among a large group of supposedly enlightened mental health professionals, few came forward to outright condemn or ban ECT. One participant responded to my comments with, "It worries me how this debate gets so polarized." This refusal to say or to accept something polarizing is a hallmark of most so-called reformers in the field of mental health.

The Journal of ECT, looking at the question of whether antidepressant medications at the start of ECT reduced post-ECT relapse in a sample of...

Electroshock survivor Nancy Rubstein and professor, author, and antipsychiatry theorist Dr. Bonnie Burstow were recently interviewed for CTV News Channel about Dr. Burstow's new book, The...

While most of the sting is gone, even now — almost sixty years on — I can’t get through a single day without thinking about shock treatment and the state hospital. I regularly have dreams or nightmares about being lost in a strange place and someone making me feel like dirt.

I am a psychiatric survivor of over thirty-six years. Since my nervous breakdown in 1978, I have undergone multitudinous experiences ranging from the subtly humiliating to the horrifically debilitating at the hands of incompetent psychiatrists and psychopharmacologists who, in the name of medicine, did more harm than good.

I lived through forced ECT from 2005-2006 at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut. My experience with ECT was the impetus for me to become involved in the antipsychiatry and Mad Pride movements, although I am not entirely opposed to voluntary mental health treatment. The following is the comment I submitted to the FDA on its proposal to down-classify the ECT shock device.

Afraid of facing me in court, the state gave up entirely and a young man was freed from involuntary ECT treatment. It was a total victory. Meanwhile, the Psychiatric Industrial Complex is finding more subtle ways to inflict electrical energy upon the brains of children labeled with ADHD.

"A retired nurse, a Harvard-educated musician and others sued British Columbia this week, claiming it forcibly subjects mental health patients to electroconvulsive therapy and...

As a movement strategy, electroshock must be clearly framed and understood as a blatant human rights violation — a profound and devastating crime against people’s health and lives. Here are three possible action proposals in our continuing struggle to abolish electroshock.

We now have only 89 days to respond to Docket No. FDA-2014-N-1210. Tell the FDA no to the down-classification of shock devices. Tell the FDA exactly how subjective and damaging the terms “treatment-resistant” and “require rapid response” are, and how they fail as legitimate medical concepts. The known risks of electroshock should not be ignored because one has been psychiatrically labeled.