Brain Stimulation: Electroconvulsive Therapy

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Capitalist medicine is truly shameful.

Anonymous of NH 11:58PM July 06, 2011

After a series of episodes ... manic, depressive, mixed and rapid cycling ... I received ECT. It took a total of 22 treatments.
It saved my life. There is some memory loss, mostly around the events leading up to the treatments, but all and all it is worth it. I am back at my job, one that requires attention to detail a great deal of mental clarity and I am doing well. It has been over a year since I stopped having treatments.

Mick of MO 7:40AM December 08, 2009

yea 'so i dont believe that this is reliable information and if a website is going to be created like this make it accurate so the general internet body can use it as viable and reliable information thank you.

joseph of CT 11:46AM September 23, 2009

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-shocking-ray
Ray is a 55-year-old Minnesota resident who is regularly receiving "Involuntary Outpatient Maintenance Electroshock."
Involuntary outpatient electroshock (IOE) is part of a trend to bring the power of forced psychiatric procedures out into the community.
Your home is no longer your castle... it can become your ward. For example, most USA states have quietly passed laws allowing individuals living at home to be court ordered to take powerful psychiatric drugs against their will. It was only a matter of time until such outpatient coercion included electroshock.
Electroshock itself has made a comeback throughout the USA, and internationally, without adequate human rights protection.
Ray is receiving so-called "maintenance" ongoing weekly electroshock over his expressed wishes while living at home. Falsely believing "new improved" electroshock is safe, the mental health system is at times administering more than 100 "maintenance" electroshocks to a single individual over months and years.
This could happen to Ray. Even his mother, who is a retired nurse who used to administer involuntary electroshocks back in the 1950's, is concerned by the sheer number of forced shocks he has received.
This could happen to anyone.
This could happen to you or a loved one.
The mental health system today has a lot of "buzz words" like empowerment, self-determination, advocacy, recovery, peer support, transformation, consumer-run, trauma-informed care.
How real are buzz words, when Ray Sandford gets forced outpatient electroshock each week?
For more information see:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/ray

Felice Eliscu of WI 2:06PM August 13, 2009

I see the spin doctors have been at work with the "brain stimulation" angle. Hitting someone over the head with a hammer is also a stimulus. Indeed the superficial and temporary benefits of ECT (euphoria and apathy, psychiatry's idea of "giddiness") have been compared to the temporary effects of other types of closed-head injury even by some of shock's proponents in psychiatry. The more profound effects of cognitive and memory deficits which also result from this brain damaging treatment are unfortunately permanent, as any honest psychiatrist will tell you.
http://www.ect.org/electroconvulsive-therapy-causes-permanent-amnesia-and-cognitive-deficits/
How people in depressing life situations are expected to cope with their new neurological handicaps afterwards is obviously something that shock doctors haven't considered worthy of consideration. A pity since, ironically, the causal connection between cognitive deficits and depression has been already well established.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/316/7138/1160
That we are still having this discussion 30 years after such admissions of brain damage were being made in psychiatric journals is a testament to the unscientific and profit centered biases endemic in psychiatry, and the seemingly infinite gullibility of its cheerleaders in the media.
No wonder self-described "psychiatric survivors" are such a constant PR problem for the "mental health" authorities. It's a shame the courts still haven't caught on to the reality of the self-serving quackery and corruption behind psychiatry's dubious reputation.

Rich Winkel of MO 11:01PM August 09, 2009

While the curent form of ECT is more gentle than the earlier form because anasthesia is given to prevent the seizure to cause broken bones, the idea that this form of electric current is compatible with the saltatory conductive electrical forms of the delicate neurons seems is intuitively ridiculous since the forms of electricity are completely different. ECT still uses electrons moving along a path while the more sophisticated neurons use ion gates which have a completely different method of transfering energy. Once the neuron's sophisticated saltatory conduction is understood, the use of lightning type electricity on the brain seems more Barbaric. They should stop ECT or at least make people more aware of the fact that the brain dies not use this type of electricity.

Michael Haan of WA 9:38PM August 09, 2009

This article on electroshock by Sarah Baldauf is, unfortunately, too typical of mainstream corporate media coverage on mental health issues.
I've been a community organizer in the field of mental health human rights for 33 years, and I've talked to hundreds of people harmed by human rights violations related to electroshock, including so-called "modern" electroshock.
What an incredible amount of heart break and suffering are being caused by the electroshock industry today.
Unfortunately, Ms. Baldauf apparently chose not to find any of the many critics of the electroshock procedure, to dive deeper into why it is so inherently harmful.
It would have taken just a Google search or two to find many organizations, psychiatrists, psychologists, researchers, and survivors of electroshock who could have told readers that modern electroshock is not far "gentler" as Mr. Baldauf claims, in her own words, with zero substantiation or evidence.
Ms. Baldauf's coverage of electroshock reminds me of previous year's coverage of the financial industry. Corporate media has gullibly believed for years that the financial industry was adequately regulated. We've discovered differently. Well, the electroshock industry is LESS regulated than the financial industry. The difference is that people's lives and minds are at stake.
I encourage those who have an ounce of skepticism be more professional in their evaluation of electroshock. Google around. Look at Peter Breggin's web site about electroshock, or go to ours by googling MindFreedom electroshock.
Those on the receiving end of electroshock tend to be very vulnerable people, mainly older women in extreme despair, easily manipulated by the electroshock industry. It's especially sad and dangerous when corporate media plays the role of cheerleader for these despicable human rights violations. Ms. Baldauf ought to be immediately fired.

David W. Oaks, Director, MindFreedom International of OR 4:16PM August 09, 2009

The current put through a persons brain as treatment would kill the same person if put through their chest.
Without the heavy muscle relaxers and other drugs people shocked regularly broke bones in convulsions. It looks nice and calm because the patient has been drugged into immovability.
the results of ECT are identical to a head injury. Side effects include Vision Problems, Weakness on either side of body, Blood pressure, Seizures, Headaches, Memory Loss, Lack of Balance, Heart problems, Chest pains, Nausea, Panic Attacks, Insomnia, Shakes, tremors, involuntarily Hand clenching, any involuntary body movement, Mental ability decreased. All of this increased medical costs and decreases ability and functionality in life.
The FDA is now requiring all the ECT manufacturers to prove the devices work because in the past the FDA grandfathered the devices into use without studying the dangers and even now list the shock machines as "experimental".
Shock therapy is a gamble, the apparent gain is fleeting, the damage is permanent. Patients who feel helped are paraded around and the majority of patients damaged quietly die early or go on wishing they had not done the treatment and afraid to tell anyone for the stigma.

Jim Moore of TX 11:12AM July 16, 2009

As a historian of ECT, it never ceases to amaze and amuse me that so-called journalists are still writing and publishing the same story on ECT that was first dictated to them by the American Psychiatric Association back in the late 70s.
The antidote to this hype is a good solid history of ECT that shows how public relations tactics have been used successfully for over 30 years to deceive the public about the nature and risks of shock..
See "Doctors of Deception: What They Don't Want You to Know About Shock Treatment" by Linda Andre, Rutgers University Press.
See especially Chapter 14 on how the media uncritically parrots the industry line, right down to the claim that ECT is making a comeback.
Shame on you, USNews, for being fooled by a decades-old public relations scam.

Linda Andre of NY 1:13AM July 16, 2009