Tag: ECT

Electroshock therapy peaked in the 1940s and 1950s. But the controversial practice - with patients sometimes shocked while fully awake and without muscle relaxants - has not disappeared.

I hope that legal cases like these will encourage psychiatrists to think twice before administering such a potentially damaging treatment.

Pilling explains how Mad Studies moves from first-person knowledge to questions of sanism, psychiatric authority, mutual aid, and collective resistance.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a controversial practice, with recent research finding harm, as well as a lack of efficacy and informed consent. A new...

Imagine you’ve spent your entire life as a healthy person, seven decades in fact, and suddenly being recommended ECT by the psychiatry department of a prestigious university.

From The CT Examiner. "He remembers saying no. No to shock therapy. The procedure was something he had thought about after his psychologist and...

A new international online survey published in the Journal of Affective Disorders gives voice to the lived experiences of people who have undergone electroconvulsive...

A roundup of Mad in America's most read blogs and personal stories of 2025 as chosen by our readers.

Mental health services force electroshock, rarely asking about causes like childhood adversities and recent stressors; few receive therapy.

Unpacking forced electroshock data obtained from the State of Connecticut Office of the Probate Court Administrator.

114 people told us they lost vital memories like getting married, birthdays, and family events.

“We need the MindFreedom Shield to have someone in our corner when we are told that it doesn't matter what we want, that someone else can make a choice about our bodies that we will have to live with for the rest of our lives.”

I live with the changes every day, even now, four years later. It often feels as though the shocks have rendered me one-handed, only ever capable of dealing with one thing at a time.

The risk of undergoing shock treatment remains. As the FDA warns, “The long-term safety and effectiveness of ECT treatment has not been demonstrated.”

History shows us that the mentally ill are extraordinarily vulnerable to therapeutic experimentation, some particularly brutal and extreme, which continues to the present day.

Proponents of ECT have resorted to ad hominem attacks and rude language in addition to reiterating the same tired points over and over. John Read responds.

Researchers argue that we need a paradigm shift away from the biomedical model of mental illness to one informed by political action and common sense.

An open letter from patients, psychiatrists, and professors calls on NICE to rewrite the new ECT guidelines to avoid putting patients’ safety at risk.

The New York Times article paints a rosy picture of ECT, but it’s based on a misleading study and dismisses the plentiful research on ECT’s harms.

A new documentary about gay activists' defeat of the APA ends with a disclaimer that ECT is "effective" for severe depression. Bruce Levine spoke with the filmmakers.

The basic assumptions behind unethical practices like lobotomies and insulin shock therapy are still the foundation on which psychiatry’s main treatments are built today.

On Denmark's declining use of depression pills for children, and why one should never stop fighting to change psychiatry and society's reliance on it.

If Minnesota is going to mandate ECT for people like Charles Helmer, there are at least 20 questions they need to consider before proceeding.

More than 200 people signed an open letter to the FDA requesting electroconvulsive therapy’s safety studies and electrical dosing protocols.

Psychiatry has a history of continuing to perform harmful, even deadly procedures. But does it still happen? Medication-induced akathisia filled two and a half pages of the DSM-IV. Why was it written out of the DSM 5?