Patient at Cavan hospital given ECT without proper medication

From a Report in the Irish Times

Inspectors at a psychiatric unit in Cavan General Hospital investigated a “serious” incident where a patient was administered electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) without the required muscle relaxant medication.

An unannounced inspection was carried out at the acute psychiartirc unit of the hospital on June 3rd and 4th 2014 .

Inspection of one individual clinical file found a detained patient had consented to a course of electroconvulsive therapy treatment.

The anaesthetist failed to administer the required muscle relaxant medication before one of the treatment sessions.

The medical record stated that the patient has complained of joint stiffness and that the consultant psychiatrist would inform the patient of the drug administration error.

“However, there was no record in the patient’s clinical file that this adverse incident has been discussed with the patient,” the report said.

At the request of the inspectors, a review report in relation to the incident was provided.

Inspectors said there was no record in the of the event entered in the incident log or reviewed by all relevant clinical personnel and the manager.

“The clinical governance in response to this incident appeared to be lax” the report said.

The Inspectorate Mental Health Services immediately requested a report on the incident from the clinical director and notified the Mental Health Commission of this “matter of serious concern”.

[..]

While it is good news that ECT is on the the decline, it is shocking that not only is it still practiced in Ireland, but that they cannot even follow their own safety rules

[BOOK] Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock, and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex

Renowned psychiatrist Peter Breggin documents how psychiatric drugs and electroshock (ECT) disable the brain. He presents the latest scientific information on potential brain dysfunction and dangerous behavioral abnormalities produced by the most widely used drugs including Prozac, Xanax, Halcion, Ritalin, and lithium. Even though this book was published a few years ago, it is still a highly relevant and import work

Many of Breggin's earlier findings have improved clinical practice, led to legal victories against drug companies, and resulted in FDA-mandated changes in what the manufacturers must admit about their drugs. This greatly expanded second edition, supported by the latest evidence-based research, shows that psychiatric drugs achieve their primary or essential effect by causing brain dysfunction, and they tend to do far more harm than good.

Author's website

Available through Amazon.com here.

Author's description of the book:

"For those who have been following my work or who wish an introduction to my lifetime reform efforts and scientific investigations in the field of psychiatry, the newly published second edition of Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex (Springer Publishing Company, 2008) has recently been published. It is a thorough and up-to-date presentation of my overall critique of modern psychiatry, including the latest medications and treatments.

"The new edition describes general principles for the safe withdrawal from psychiatric drugs with specific examples of withdrawal problems related to each type of psychiatric medication, including antidepressants, tranquilizers, stimulants, mood stabilizers and neuroleptic (antipsychotic) drugs. For interested professionals, patients and clients, it presents guidelines for how to conduct psychotherapy and counseling without resort to psychiatric drugs, even for the most emotionally distressed people.

"The new edition of the book presents evidence confirming many of the first edition’s most controversial conclusions. Research continues to demonstrate that antidepressants are ineffective in treating depression and instead increase the risk of suicidality. As another example, additional studies have shown that stimulants offer no long-term positive effects on the behavior of children and that these drugs suppress growth and make children prone to cocaine abuse as young adults. Recent reports continue to confirm that electroshock causes permanent brain damage and cognitive dysfunction.

"The scientific premise of the book is that all psychiatric treatments—drugs, electroshock and lobotomy—have their 'therapeutic' impact by disabling the brain. They do not improve brain function or correct biochemical imbalances, they cause brain dysfunction and biochemical imbalances. These brain-disabling interventions are then considered effective when the doctor, family, patient or society views impaired brain dysfunction in the target individuals as a desirable or beneficial effect. Because psychiatric drugs in reality do more harm than good, the psychopharmaceutical complex must devote billions of dollars to exerting its power and influence in the political, professional and public arenas.

"'Antipsychotic' drugs such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel and Geodon are used literally to chemically lobotomize millions of adults and children because the resulting apathy and indifference are seen as an improvement over their previously distressed and distressing state of mind or behavior. Millions more adults take 'tranquilizers' like Xanax, Ativan, Klonopin and Valium, suppressing their overall brain function in order to reduce feelings of anxiety. A large percentage of our nation’s children have their spontaneity reduced or even crushed by stimulant drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall and Strattera, causing them to become more docile and more obsessively attentive to rote work.

"Despite all the propaganda, antidepressants such Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft and Cymbalta have no scientifically demonstrable effectiveness and are proven to cause suicidality, as well as violence and mania. They too 'work' by causing mental disabilities such as apathy and euphoria that are misinterpreted as improvements. Meanwhile, their continued widespread use is determined in part by the fact that withdrawal produces severe psychiatric symptoms, including anxiety and depression. In short, it is too difficult and painful for people to stop taking them.

"All psychiatric drugs have the potential to cause withdrawal reactions, including the antidepressants, stimulants, tranquilizers, antipsychotic drugs and 'mood stabilizers' such lithium. When the individual’s condition grows markedly worse within days or weeks of stopping the psychiatric drug, this is almost always due to a withdrawal reaction. However, misinformed doctors and misled parents, teachers and patients think that this is evidence that the individual 'needs' the drug even more, when in fact he or she needs time to recover from withdrawal effects.

"People commonly use alcohol, marijuana and other non-prescription drugs to dull their feelings. Usually they do not fool themselves into believing they are somehow improving the function of their minds and brains. Yet when people take psychiatric drugs, they almost always do so without realizing that the drugs “work” by disrupting brain function, that the drugs cause withdrawal effects, and that they frequently result in dangerous and destructive mental reactions and behaviors.

"Most consumers of psychiatric drugs do not realize how much these chemical agents disrupt the function of the brain and mind. As a result, their treatment in effect becomes involuntary. Many other adults are physically forced to these drugs in hospitals and even under outpatient commitment that allows for enforced drugging in the home. Because children cannot control their lives, or understand the implications of taking drugs, they are always involuntary participants in these brain-disabling treatments. Our society needs to stop forcing psychoactive drugs on its citizens, young and old.

"Electroshock provides a more obvious illustration of the brain-disabling effects of psychiatric treatment. Shock treatment is simply closed-head injury caused by an overwhelming current of electricity sufficient to cause a grand mal seizure. When the patient becomes apathetic, the doctor writes in the hospital chart, 'No longer complaining.' When the patient displays the euphoria commonly associated brain damage, the doctor writes, 'mood improved.' Meanwhile, the individual’s brain and mind are so drastically injured that he or she is rendered unable to protest. They are easily led to take repeated shock treatments. In many cases, family members must intervene to stop the destructive 'treatment.'

"The brain-disabling principle of psychiatric treatment is not a speculation. It is a solid scientific theory based on hundreds of evidence-based reports, clinical experience, and common sense observations. I believe it will stand the test of time."

"The new edition of Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry introduces the concept of medication spellbinding—the capacity of psychoactive drugs to blunt the individual’s appreciation of drug-induced mental dysfunction and, at times, to encourage a misperception that they are doing better than ever when they are, in fact, doing worse than ever. In the extreme, medication spellbinding drives individuals into bizarre, out-of-character destructive actions, including suicide and violence. Medication spellbinding is an aspect of the brain-disabling principle that explains why so many individuals take drugs of all kinds, from antidepressants to alcohol, when they are causing them great harm and even destroying their lives.

"The power of the psychopharmaceutical complex, a concept that I introduced in 1991 in Toxic Psychiatry, has now received confirmation from innumerable books by disenchanted members of the medical establishment. The new edition of Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry reviews some of these other books and articles, and presents details about how the drug companies continue to rule the world of psychiatry; they control research and journal publications, dominate medical education, collaborate with insurance companies and federal agencies, and finance organized psychiatry and medicine.

"This new edition of Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry has a long history, originating in the 1983 publication of Psychiatric Drugs: Hazards to the Brain and then evolving into the initial 1997 edition of Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry. The concepts and information—contained 16 detailed chapters and 85 pages of scientific bibliography—provide a mountain of information about what’s wrong with modern psychiatry and what’s needed to correct it."

What’s Behind the Dramatic Decline in ECT Treatment Over the Past 15 Years?

As Reported in the Psychiatric News.

Here are some of the highlights:

There has been a dramatic decline in the use of electroconvulsive therapy in U.S. general hospitals over the past 15 years.

[...]

This finding comes from a study published online October 10 in Biological Psychiatry. The lead researcher was Brady Case, M.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry at Brown University and director of the Health Services Research Program at Bradley Hospital in East Providence, R.I.

The study conducted by Case and his colleagues appears to be the first study on the use of inpatient ECT in U.S. general hospitals since 1992. They examined trends in the use of ECT in a national hospital sample over a 17-year period from 1993 to 2009. The hospitals were nonfederal, short-term general or specialty hospitals, including both public and private facilities and academic medical centers. However, freestanding psychiatric hospitals were excluded. In their paper, Case and his coworkers referred to all of the analyzed hospitals as “general hospitals.”

Here are several of their most salient findings:

• The percentage of general hospitals conducting ECT decreased from 15 percent to 11 percent, and the percentage of hospitals with psychiatric units conducting ECT decreased from 55 percent to 35 percent.
• The number of stays in general hospitals involving ECT rose from 1993 to 1995 from 13/100,000 residents to 16/100,000 residents, but then fell gradually after that, to 7/100,000 residents in 2009. This decline appeared to be due, to a large extent, to reduced use of ECT with elderly patients, a group traditionally thought to benefit most from it. (?!!)
• For inpatients with severe recurrent depression, the percentage whose treating hospitals conducted ECT fell from 71 percent to 45 percent.
• Throughout the study period, depressed inpatients from poor neighborhoods and those who were publicly insured or uninsured were less likely to receive care from hospitals conducting ECT.

“The data strongly support the impression that psychiatric units of general hospitals are ceasing to conduct ECT and that this is driving the decline in the number of patients receiving ECT,” Case told Psychiatric News. But why are hospitals dropping the procedure?

Possible explanations, Case said, are “growing pressures to avoid the inpatient treatment costs and length of stay associated with ECT and declining familiarity and more negative attitudes toward the procedure among providers and patients…. We didn’t have information on provider and patient attitudes, but as more facilities cease conducting ECT, we can expect that fewer clinicians and inpatients will be exposed to the option…. On the other hand, it is clear that popular perceptions of mental illness are increasingly biological, and where ECT is conducted, there has been no decline in patients electing to receive it.”

[...]

The findings have widespread implications, Case believes. For example, “most Americans admitted to general hospitals for severe, recurrent depression are now being treated in facilities that do not conduct ECT. This is the consequence of a solid 15-year trend in which psychiatric units appear to be discontinuing use of the procedure…. If the trends of the last 15 years hold, the number and proportion of general hospital psychiatric units conducting ECT will continue to decline, and fewer people will receive it.”

He added that regulations expected to be issued by the FDA will influence how ECT is used in the future, “but as far as I know, the decision about how to classify ECT devices is still pending. If the FDA follows its panel recommendation and ultimately retains Class III—high risk—status for ECT devices, then I would expect the decline to accelerate.”

[...]

The Top Ten Reasons Psychiatrists Get Sued

This is the text of a paper/talk presented at a conference on medical malpractice in Texas in 1993, and is focused on Texas Law.

How I Decided to Sue You: Misadventures in Psychiatry

It is an interesting read, but is 24 pages long, including cover sheet, etc.

As a quick summary, The top ten reasons psychiatrists get sued are

A. Failure to Prevent Suicides or Self Inflicted Injuries
B. Sex with the Sick
C. Informed Consent (or lack thereof)
D. Inappropriate Administration of Electro Convulsive Therapy
E. Inappropriate Use or Non Use of Physical or Chemical Restraints
F. Liability for Locking Them Up
G. Injuries Resulting from Escapes or Elopements
H. Medication Errors
I. Failure to Diagnose Intracranial Lesions
J. the Psychiatrist Duty to Warn Third Persons

Overall, an interesting read. This is a PDF Document

Electroshock therapy is being used on chinese teenagers to treat Internet addiction

From a report first seen here

Electroshock therapy is being administered to youngsters at a controversial Internet addiction clinic where patients are "reborn".

More than 3,000 youths have been tricked or forced in to a four-month program run by Dr Yang Yongxin at a clinic in Shandong province. About 100 people are currently receiving treatment at the clinic.

Patients are given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for breaking any of the center's 86 rules, including eating chocolate, locking the bathroom door, taking pills before a meal and sitting on Yang's chair without permission, the Information Times reported.

Parents or guardians sign a contract acknowledging that the child will be given ECT and pay 6,000 yuan ($878) per month for treatment.

Details about the treatment were revealed online recently when a number of former patients began to write about their experience.

According to the posts, the clinic administers continuous ECT in a current of up to 200 milliamperes.

Meanwhile, patients are forced to admit "wrongdoings" and those of others and are also instructed to kneel down in front of their parents to show obedience.

In addition, patients - known as "members of the alliance" at the clinic - are not permitted to talk about anything other than overcoming their Internet addiction, numerous former patients write.

Most are found to be "cured" - or "reborn" according to Yang - by simply "admitting" that they have overcome their addiction.

Internet addiction is not classified as a mental illness in China, a country with nearly 300 million Internet users, many of whom are adolescents who willingly indulge in endless hours of online games per day.

Depression, fainting, muscle weakness and twitching and anorexia have been listed as typical syndromes of Internet addiction.

The government established the first Internet addiction treatment clinic in Beijing in 2004.

Today, all online game operators are required to install a "fatigue system" for players under 18 years, which is designed to restrict their play time to three hours a day. But analysts say there are too many ways to work around the rules.

Until recently, media reported on Yang's alleged "success". Liu Mingyin, a China Central Television reporter, called Yang "a fighter in the Third Opium War", framing the doctor's combat against Internet obsession as part of an ongoing war against "spiritual opium".

For his part, Yang views his acts as part of "a holy crusade" and says the electric current he applies to his "patients" is mild and "not dangerous".

What the youths receive at the clinic isn't really ECT, but a "refreshment therapy" that cautiously helps Net-addicted children calm down, says a story written in Yang's name and published online.

[...]

Tao Ran, director of the China's first Internet addiction clinic, said that ECT is "the last resort" in treating people with severe depression who are suicidal.

"It'll make patients more submissive, no doubt. But at the same time, ECT will cause memory loss," Tao says, adding that Yang's clinic is "the only Internet addiction clinic in the world that applies ECT to patients".

Tao's own center has treated more than 4,000 Internet-addicted youths. Patients have "comprehensive therapy" that includes medication and psychological counseling.

About 30 percent of Internet addicted youngsters are hyperactive and uncontrollable in a family environment, Tao said.

They need treatment at a professional institution that does not administer ECT, he said.

Zhuo Xiaoqin, a public health expert with the China University of Political Science and Law, said it was wrong to link Internet obsession with mental illness.

"A consistent standard must be in place to determine what Internet addiction really is," he said.

(China Daily June 3, 2009)

The Lake Alice Hospital

The Lake Alice Hospital website is the only/first website dedicated to the notorious psychiatric hospital. A snippet from their history page.

Located at Rangitikei New Zealand, it was opened In August 1950

Lake Alice is named after the Lake which shares the same name, which is the second lake to the south of the estate. Built as a psychiatric hospital, the complex consists of 56 Acres with 10 two story 11 bed villas, a fire station, 2 swimming pools, Maximum secure villa, large staff housing building, 2 libraries, a large community hall, chapel, morgue and 4 two storied 50 bed villas along with plenty of garaging, administration building, glass houses gardens, separate dining rooms & several rugby/cricket patch’s.

[...] The most unbelievable tale to be told was the behavior that went on between the patients & the staff.

During the early 1970's- 1980’s mistreatment went on towards patients who were given ECT, also known as electro-convulsive therapy (shock treatment), with most of the time this would cause the person to pass out. Painful injections of paraldehyde were also a common practice. There has been many rumors of sexual abuse.

While there could never be away to replace what happened to these people there has been government pay outs to sums of over $10 million to the claimants.

The hospital doors where officially shut in late 1999. Now days the hospital stands abandoned most of the buildings are very run down & trashed from either outsiders or cattle which roam the land.

People do live onsite to keep the property secure from further vandals

In July 2006 the 56 acres & buildings was sold to a developer, who has plans to develop the estate, He hopes to subdivide the property although there has been no progress since it was brought.''See newspaper articles for more information''

This is a decent website, although the text needs some polishing, spell and grammar checking, etc. to look more professional, and some of the local color of New Zealand English should be kept. There are a number of photos of the various facilities at the hospital, not available elsewhere.

Also, the site is somewhat sympathetic to the mental health industry, which is a minus, because of the massive profiteering that goes on with people's lives. The website author does have a specific page dedicated to the scandal, but there is so much more that could be said about it. We at Psychwatch have a number of earlier stories about the Lake Alice Scandal and some of the criminals involved

The web author misses the social veneer of an industry that with a pleasant smile cheerfully fried the brains of dozens of people, which is unfortunate. This is a common mistake, although sheer incompetence is also a fault in the industry.

Irish Psychiatrist leading campaign against use of 'archaic' electro-shock therapy in hospitals

And now for a small bit of sanity from Ireland. As seen in the Irish Independent.

According to a leading doctor, thousands of Irish psychiatric patients experiencing psychological distress have had electric shocks of up to 400 volts administered to their brains, frequently against their will.

This controversial treatment, known as electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), works by artificially inducing epileptic fits.

Those who endorse it believe that the seizure triggers a surge of "well-being" which soothes the symptoms of the psychological distress being targeted, such as depression, schizophrenia, mania, obsessive convulsive disorders and anorexia.

The last recorded figures reveal that, in 2003, 1,483 people here were treated with ECT, 859 of whom were in the south of Ireland and 624 in the north.

Dr Michael Corry, consultant psychiatrist at the Institute of Psychosocial Medicine, contends that the state of confusion, sometimes tinged with a mild euphoria, that is regularly encountered in the aftermath of some types of head injuries, temporarily obscures the patient's original symptoms, which is then erroneously classified by psychiatrists as an "improvement".

"The fact that these results wear off is underlined by the reality that some patients have literally had hundreds of shocks. Why is this terrible and devastating human rights abuse allowed to go on?" he asks.

Dr Corry is leading the Irish campaign to abolish ECT. "It's irrational, archaic and barbaric it has no place in the 21st century" he says.

"It is universally agreed that the occurrence of seizures in a patient is always harmful to their brain. Within neurology as a speciality, every effort is made to prevent seizures but, incredibly, psychiatry stands out as the only branch of medicine that specialises in deliberately causing seizures."

ANALYSIS LIVING, PAGE 13

He first witnessed ECT being administered during his psychiatric training at St Brendan's Psychiatric Hospital in the Seventies, where the shock of what he saw caused him to faint.

"I couldn't work out how this could possibly be done to human beings," he says. "I saw it as abuse from very beginning, because it was being given to people on the premise that they had a disease of the mind. When I realised that people were basically being given it to control behaviour, it was just like the end of the world to me."

He refused to fulfill the compulsory ECT component of his course and ended up transferring to Guy's Hospital in London to complete his studies. After he qualified as a GP, and prior to embarking on his psychiatry studies, he achieved higher qualifications in obstetrics and paediatrics.

His long-held belief is that mental distress is a valid human experience that doesn't emanate from a malfunctioning, diseased brain.

He believes that abolishing ECT would allow a psychosocial, humanistic understanding of mental distress to emerge, paving the way for prevention and healing, and facilitating a person-centred approach, through counselling, cognitive therapy, and other techniques that are based on individual hearts and souls.

"Mental distress results from the problems of living," he says. "Using ECT is the equivalent of sending the TV or computer for repair if the programmes are not to one's liking."

Many studies have demonstrated that memory loss is the first obvious result of electric shock treatment, plunging the patient into a state of confusion, fear and vulnerability. Other areas of intellectual functioning are also compromised, as is the ability to experience the full range of feelings, creating a state of emotional numbness.

"To isolate a depressed, suffering human being from their thoughts, behaviours, and the workings of their world is a tragedy beyond words, as it reduces them, and the rest of us, to a chemical soup encapsulated in skin.

In this soup, there is no place for uniqueness, imagination, will, acceptance, compassion, love, peace, creativity, personal freedom and the unfathomable depths of the human spirit."

Aside from the mental damage ECT causes, brain autopsies on patients have revealed physical damage. Some elderly people have died from strokes and pneumonia in the days and weeks following a course of ECT treatment, as they are known to do after any major trauma.

"Given these effects, it would be inconceivable that anyone in their right mind would sanction such a procedure for administration to a developing foetus as it floats in fluid suspended within the uterus, with the goal of improving its 'well-being'," says Dr Corry. "You'd have to ask whether the adult brain is any less fragile? It is self-evident that ECT is unsustainable, because if it were seeking a licence today, it would be rejected on safety grounds."

"ECT is a holocaust of the brain, and a brutal final solution which must be stopped," he says. "The time to abolish electric shock treatment is now."

If you would like to share your experiences of ECT as part of a research study, please contact the Institute of Psychosocial Medicine in Dun Laoghaire (01) 2800084 or email ipmed@eircom.net. You can also visit a website, wellbeingfoundation.com, which is dedicated to the abolition of ECT

As one clever person noted:A *psychiatrist* asks "Why is this terrible and devastating human rights abuse allowed to go on?"!!!

Of interest: "I am also against the forced use of ECT on any human being." Which forced psychiatric procedures (treatments?) are you not against?

Marketing Electro Convulsive Therapy

The Last Psychiatrist Weblog has an interesting observation on the press releases that essentially spin and market ECT in the wake of some new study.

Of course, our opinion of ECT is much harsher than the dear doctors', but the insider's insight is worth taking notes on.

A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, the largest of its kind, finds that prior treatment failure with antidepressants did not predict lower success rates with ECT. Phew.

Well, if that was all there was, it would be a pretty pointless study. And certainly not worthy of press releases. You have to read them, to see how the authors spin the study:

They therefore conclude that given appropriate indications for ECT, "antidepressant medication resistance should not sway the clinician from providing this modality."

Read it again. Just because you failed antidepressants, it doesn't mean you shouldn't try ECT. Huh? I thought that was specifically when you were supposed to use ECT?

"The implication of our study," lead investigator Dr. Keith G. Rasmussen told Reuters Health, "is that even if a depressed patient has not responded to one or more antidepressant medication trials, ECT still has acute success rates as high as for patients who have not had a medication trial before ECT."

That's some might nice sleight of hand. Look how he phrases his comparison: "...ECT still has success rates as high as for those who have not taken meds." See? He's making your baseline clinical experience be all those patients you've put on ECT who have never been on meds, and saying that ECT in the medication resistant will be just as good.

That's the important part, read it again.

He is trying to implant in you the belief that there exists an entire group of patients for whom you used ECT first line, before antidepressants.

[...]

It's a product positioning strategy, Marketing 101. You cannot take on a market leader head on, even if your product is "better" because, as the adage goes, "first beats best." Royal Crown cola can't take on Coca Cola. In order to succeed, you need to position your product as an alternative to the market leader. How? By admitting there is a market leader.

[...]

Antidepressants occupy the "first line" position in the customer's (i.e. doctor's) mind. ECT can't compete directly with them. But Rasmussen positions ECT as an alternative to antidepressants, one of equivalent value. He doesn't say ECT is better than antidepressants-- a point which then becomes a debate-- he says there's no relationship to antidepressants. It's an alternative to antidepressants, equal. Go ahead and try, you have nothing to lose, they're all the same.

The Committee for Truth in Psychiatry

The Committee for Truth in Psychiatry, or CTIP, is a national organization of over 500 former electric shock patients. They are an important organization in the context of Human Rights. here is a snippet from their front page:

None of us was truthfully informed about the nature or consequences of this treatment before consenting to it, and we have pooled our experience-gained knowledge to provide truthful information about it for future psychiatric patients.

Over the years, many individual recipients of "electroconvulsive therapy" (ECT) (shock treatment) have related their personal experiences, verbally or in writing, emphasizing whatever aspects were most important in each one's special circumstances. What the CTIP has done as a group is to highlight and emphasize the common demoninators in the shock experience. Accordingly, though our members differ widely in the details of their own stories, including how they got into ECT and how much good or (more often) harm it did them, we can agree on the most certain effects of ECT and that future patients should be informed of them before they give their consent to it.

Following are the most important points we make:

• If a person is in a state of physical suffering of nervous origin, ECT will almost certainly relieve it temporarily. ECT relaxes the nervous system and the relaxing effect lasts from a couple of days to a couple of months. Sometimes people stay well after the relaxing effect has worn off, but, typically, they quickly relapse.
  
  
• Regardless of any beneficial effect, there is always a permanently deleterious effect on memory. This consists of erasure of a good deal of pre-shock memory and dimming of more, and it frequently includes also a permanent reduction in retentiveness for post-shock experience and learning.
  
  
• These two effects in combination---the temporary feeling of well-being and the permanent harm to memory---imply that ECT "works" by damaging the brain. These are the classic symptoms of acute brain injury by any means---strokes, asphyxiation, concussion, carbon monoxide poisoning, etc. In all these events, the patient feels very well for a while but can't remember. If further evidence were needed of the principle at work in ECT's beneficial effect, it could be noted that the memory loss from ECT has always the distinctive pattern of brain damage forgetting (recent memories hardest hit) and that ECT is sometimes followed by other brain damage phenomena (examples common among our members are impairment of sense of direction and a touch of aphasia, or difficulty saying the words you meant to say).

As a vehicle for communicating these few salient points about ECT to future patients, we have incorporated them (along with other information) in a model informed consent statement which we should like to see sponsored by the FDA or some governmental body. All CTIP members have endorsed the statement.

They also note that:

ECT is one of a number of drastic psychiatric treaments, including insulin coma and psychosurgery, that relieve suffering temporarily. All of them "work" by destroying brain tissue. That is their common denominator. In ECT both the electrical shocks and the grand mal seizures are destructive. For some still unknown reason, reducing the size of the brain not only reduces the amount of stored memory but also counteracts states of physical pain and any kind of emotion.

Spokane psychologist accused of seducing patient

From KREM and KING 5 TV, with a video report available on at the link.

UPDATE: More in this report from the Spokesman review, which also has a copy of the complaint

---

A lawsuit filed in Superior Court in Spokane Monday claims a Spokane psychologist used his position to seduce a patient.

According to the complaint, the Dr. John Moulton committed multiple acts of malpractice and negligence while treating a female patient.

Malpractice cited in the legal complaint against Moulton includes: seeing the patient outside of treatment sessions, buying her alcoholic beverages, consuming alcohol with her, and other boundary violations and negligent acts of both a sexual and non-sexual nature.

Among the allegations detailed in the complaint, Dr. Moulton sent emails to the patient where he admitted to her that he acted like an abusive predator: "I have acted like an abusive predator, which may be the most despicable kind of person there is."

The alleged malpractice began after the patient, who suffered from severe depression, checked herself into Spokane's Sacred Heart Medical Center in April of 2005. The hospital assigned Moulton to be treating psychiatrist. During this two-week hospital stay, the psychologist administered a series of nine electro-shock treatments to patient.

Following discharge from the hospital, the patient returned to her family in Alaska. On June 1, 2005, she again traveled to Spokane and re-entered Sacred Heart for additional treatment for depression. Again, Dr. Moulton was assigned to be her treating psychiatrist, and according to the patient's attorney, Michael S. Kolker, who said it was during the second hospital visit that Moulton told the patient he had feelings for her.

Upon her discharge from Sacred Heart on June 12th, Moulton arranged for the patient to spend time at an in-patient facility in Lake Chelan for continuing treatment for her depression. According to Kolker, Moulton drove the patient to the Spokane airport for the flight to Lake Chelan, and kissed her before she boarded the plane.

On June 23, 2005, the patient returned to Spokane to stay at the home of her brother for continued outpatient treatment with Moulton, whose boundary violations and acts of malpractice continued.

According to Kolker, for nearly a month while he was supposed to treat the patient for depression, Moulton saw the patient almost daily outside of therapy sessions. He took her out to bars and restaurants, consumed alcohol with her, fondled and kissed her.

"When a psychiatrist does it to a patient, it's not dating and it's not a relationship. It's a boundary violation and it is abusive," said Kolker.

Moulton then told the that he loved her and tried to convince her that she was in love with him. They made plans for the future. The suit said Moulton did all of this, knowing the patient was married and the mother of three children. He also knew she was on medication and had giving her multiple sessions of electro shock therapy.

In August, the patient's husband discovered Moulton's malpractice and confronted him. According to allegations in the complaint, Moulton sent the patient and her husband a number of emails in which he admitted and apologized for his misconduct. Excerpts of some of those emails are included in the complaint.

The complaint further alleges that Moulton's negligent conduct caused the patient exacerbated depression, pain and suffering and two suicide attempts.

UPDATE: More in this report from the Spokesman review, which also has a copy of the complaint

The Anti-Depressant Fact Book - What Your Doctor Won't Tell You About Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, and Luvox

A book review by Douglas A. Smith via Susan Clark's blog

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book because it says so clearly and convincingly what I have believed for a long time about the myth of biologically caused depression and about so-called antidepressant drugs and so-called electroconvulsive "therapy" (ECT).

Of the idea of biologically caused depression, the author, psychiatrist Peter Breggin, says "It is a mistake to view depressed feelings or even severely depressed feelings as a 'disease'" (p. 14) and "There is still no reason to define grief, dejection, or melancholia as a 'disease' simply because it is severe or lasting" (p. 19). He says "...in psychiatry, none of the problems are proven to originate in the brain" (p. 169) and that "Depression is never defined by an objective physical finding, such as a blood test or brain scan. ... Attempts have also been made to find physical markers for depression, the equivalent of lab tests that indicate liver disease or a recent heart attack. Despite decades of research, thousands of research studies, and hundreds of millions of dollars in expense, no marker for depression has been found" (pp. 18 & 22).

Of the theory behind the so-called SSRI or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor "antidepressants" Dr. Breggin says "In reality, science does not have the ability to measure the levels of any biochemical in the tiny spaces between nerve cells (the synapses) in the brain of a human being. All the talk about biochemical imbalances is sheer speculation aimed at promoting psychiatric drugs. ... science has almost no understanding of how the widespread serotonin system functions in the brain.

Basically, we don't know what it does." (pp. 21 & 42).

Of drugs used to "treat" this nonexistent disease called depression he says "The term 'antidepressant' should always be thought of with quotation marks around it because there is little or no reason to believe that these drugs target depression or depressed feelings" (p. 14). He says "Impairing our emotional awareness and our intellectual acuity with psychoactive drugs such as SSRI antidepressants [including Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft] tends to impede the process of overcoming depression" (p. 26). About the foolishness of the beliefs of most people about psychiatric drugs he says:

Overall, we're a rather sophisticated citizenry with a fairly high index of suspicion about the products we buy and the corporations that influence our lives. But something happens to us when we are dealing with companies that make prescription medicines. Perhaps it's the aura of FDA approval. Perhaps it's the passage of these drugs through the trusted hands of our physicians. Perhaps it's the cleverness of the ad campaigns. Perhaps we just can't believe that anyone would sell poison as if it were a miracle cure. [p. 2]

That's right: He said "poison." Psychiatric drugs are poisons. In a chapter titled "Damaging the Brain with SSRI Antidepressants," Dr. Breggin says "the evidence is piling up that SSRIs cause permanent brain damage" (p. 38). Let's stop concealing or minimizing this truth as we do when we call psychiatric drugs "medications" or say they are merely "ineffective" or "harmful" or even "neurotoxic." Lawyers trying to defend us from outpatient commitment laws (as they are called in the USA) or laws authorizing "community treatment orders" (CTOs) (as such laws are called in Canada) should stop accepting the terminology of those advocating forced psychiatric drugging. Lawyers trying to defend us from forced psychiatric drugging should not go into court and say the so-called patient should not be ordered "to take his medication." Because psychiatric drugs are poisons, and because most that are administered by force cause permanent brain damage, lawyers representing people threatened with forced psychiatric drugging should tell it like it is and say, "Judge, the question presented for your decision today is whether my client should be ordered to swallow poison - poison that is known to cause permanent brain damage."

Letting advocates of forced psychiatric treatment get away with calling brain-damaging poisons "medications" is hurting our cause. It has been said: Whoever controls the language controls the perceived reality of those who have it. Let's not let the advocates of forced psychiatric "treatment" and those who would persuade gullible people to take harmful drugs win because they use deceptive semantics.

In the Introduction Dr. Breggin reveals why pharmaceutical companies would do something as evil as hoodwink people into believing poisons are in fact miracle cures. He says: "In the previous year [1999], Prozac had generated more than one-quarter of the company's [Eli Lilly & Company's] $10 billion in revenue" and that "Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil are among the top-selling drugs in the United States, with total sales exceeding $4 billion per year" (p. 1). We apparently can't expect pharmaceutical companies to bypass enormous profits just because the drugs they sell are hurting people.

Throughout this book Dr. Breggin points an accusing finger at the USA's Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is given the responsibility of keeping harmful drugs off the market in the USA. After reviewing how the FDA had to accept misleading, manipulated data to approve SSRI antidepressants as safe and effective, and after reviewing the harm done by these drugs, he says "If the FDA had been more responsible, these continuing tragedies could have been avoided. ... When I began my review of FDA documents as a medical expert in product liability suits against Eli Lilly and Co., I was shocked and disillusioned by what I found. Until that time, I had not fully confronted the willingness of the FDA to protect drug companies, even at the cost of human life." (pp. 78-79). He says "The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has forsaken its watchdog role. Instead, FDA officials climb like puppies into the laps of drug company executives who might some day hire them at enormous salaries" (p. 181).

One of the reasons I like this book is in it Dr. Breggin is as bold as he has been in any of his previous books when describing the pseudoscience called biological psychiatry and the harm done by its so-called treatments. For example, speaking of psychiatric drugs he says -

* "If a drug has an effect on the brain, it is harming the brain. Science has not found or synthesized any psychoactive substances that improve normal brain function. Instead, all of them impair brain function. ... antidepressants are typically prescribed in doses that cause a wide variety of adverse effects in most patients and significantly harm a great many people" (p. 168).
* "FDA approval by no means indicates that a drug is truly effective. ... the combined efforts of the drug company and the FDA could not come up with even one good study that unequivocally supported the value of Prozac in comparison to placebo" (p. 151).
* "Overall, the results suggest that placebo is actually much better than an antidepressant" (p. 145).
* "If anything, as I've already indicated, antidepressants worsen severe depression and suicidal tendencies" (p. 170).
* "Nothing reinforces depression more than having your brain befuddled by psychiatric drugs, unless it is having your mind befuddled by false ideas about the biological or genetic origin of your suffering" (p. 189).
* "Lithium, for example, is a toxic element that suppresses over-all brain function..." (p. 125)
* "There are so many potential hazards involved in taking SSRIs that no physician is capable of remembering all of them and no patient can be adequately informed about the dangers without spending days or weeks reviewing the subject in a medical library" (p. 107).

Of electroconvulsive "therapy" (ECT) he says -

* "Damaging the brain to impair brain function lies at the heart of all the physical treatments in psychiatry. Shock and lobotomy are merely the most egregious examples" (p. 155, italics in original).
* He deplores "the willingness of psychiatry to defend its treatments no matter how obviously damaging to the brain" (ibid).
* "In my clinical and forensic experience, patients and their families are never told the truth about how dangerous shock is; otherwise they would not consent to it. Shock advocates tend to tell patients that memory loss is temporary and surrounds the treatment time only, when in reality the memory loss can wipe out years of educational and career knowledge. ... Nurses, teachers, and other professionals may never again be able to function in their jobs. Like head injury patients from other causes, such as automobile accidents and lighting strikes, general mental function is often impaired for the rest of their lives. Advocates [of ECT] ignore this by chalking it up to the patient's 'mental illness.'" (pp. 160-161).
* "Electroshock treatment causes brain damage and, in my clinical experience, can cause lasting depression" (p. 141). This of course is in contrast to psychiatry's claim that by some unknown means ECT relieves depression.
* "The question is not 'Does shock treatment cause brain dysfunction and damage?' A series of shocks to the head sufficient to cause convulsions will always produce brain dysfunction and damage. The real question is 'How completely can a person recover from shock?'" (p. 162).
* Advocates of shock claim that newer methods make it safer. ... Instead, it's more dangerous. ... modified ECT requires the use of higher amounts of electrical charge than were used in the early animal experiments that showed brain damage and cell death" (p. 163).
* "In my clinical experience, the brain damage [caused by electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT] makes people feel more hopeless and resentful, and hence more suicidal" (p. 164).
* "Several state legislatures have passed laws banning shock treatment for children. It's now time to ban it for adults a well" (p. 165).

This book is a fairly short (200 page), recent (2001) book that neatly summarizes many of the best arguments against biological psychiatry. I recommend it highly.

Putin critic tells of her mental hospital ordeal

From this Report

Larisa Arap has just emerged from a 46-day imprisonment in two Russian psychiatric hospitals. Pills were forced down her throat and she received injection after injection. She doesn't know what medications they were, or whether they will cause permanent damage.

"I don't feel very well, but I have a fighting spirit," Mrs Arap said yesterday, adding that sometimes she was so drugged she could barely walk or speak

She was forcibly interned, not for health reasons, but over her association with the opposition group led by former chess star Garry Kasparov, the United Civil Front. Her arrest stemmed from the publication of an article entitled "Madhouse," exposing the ghoulish practices of a Russian psychiatric hospital in the Murmansk edition of his organisation's newspaper, Dissenters' March.

She was interned in the very hospital she had written about. "We're ready to take this to court, although the medics have made it clear that we'll lose," she said.

Russian activists say her ordeal confirms what they've argued for years: punitive psychiatry did not end with the Soviet Union. Now, critics suggest, if someone has a grudge - a husband, a business partner, even a psychiatrist - it isn't difficult to get them confined to a padded room.

In recent years, Mrs Arap had been looking after the child of her daughter, Taisiya, in her home town of Murmansk, north of the Arctic Circle. Problems first arose in 2003, when she uncovered corruption in her local housing association, as she reported in "Madhouse." She was then attacked in her building, mystery callers threatened to murder her, and finally she was warned by the FSB, the KGB's successor, to keep quiet. She didn't.

Taken to a mental ward, Mrs Arap noted that many of its occupants seemed perfectly sane. "I was surprised that among them were lots of normal people," she wrote in "Madhouse". "But how they [staff] communicated with them: They shouted, they beat them up, they put them on drips, after which people became like zombies, they raped them, carried them off in the night and returned them in the morning, tormented."

One woman was threatened with the removal of organs, Mrs Arap said. Children were told that if they didn't give massages to medics they'd receive electro-shock therapy.

Mrs Arap was freed, but on 5 July, she was restrained at a clinic after stopping for documentation needed to obtain a drivers' license. Her doctor asked if she had written "Madhouse," and when she confirmed, police escorted her to a Murmansk mental hospital.

Taisiya said that when she was first arrested, Mrs Arap was beaten, and went on a 5-day hunger strike in protest, consuming nothing but water and smoking cigarettes.

It was only on 18 July that a court sanctioned her hospitalisation; until then, she had been detained illegally. Mrs Arap was moved to a hospital near Apatity, 180 miles from Murmansk, "without her agreement or the agreement of her relatives," Taisiya said.

It was "a closed hospital from which people rarely return. ... No positive feelings arise in this hospital. It's a psychological hospital for the difficult, the dangerous, the abandoned."

Mrs Arap was eventually released when a commission, initiated by Russia's human rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, said there was no reason for her to be hospitalised.

She is due in court today to protest her treatment, and the United Civil Front plans to prosecute everyone involved, although a representative admitted the group has little chance of winning.

"We were never told anything concrete about why she was locked up," Taisiya said. "The most frightening thing of all is that the law gives a lot of power to psychiatrists and doctors to do what they want."

Why Psychiatry is Outdated

Psychiatry’s roots in paternalism: why the field has not kept up with contemporary thinking, an article by Juli Lawrence of ect.org:

At its core, the field of medicine has always been paternalistic: doctor knows best. Even the Hippocratic Oath included a line that encouraged physicians to perpetuate the imbalance of power between doctor and patient: “I will prescribe regimen for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment.”

But while patients’ rights activists have provoked change in this power struggle, the field of psychiatry maintains roots deeply planted in paternalism and patriarchy. This imbalance of power is evident in the privacy of the doctor’s office, among colleagues, in hospitals, and even in the courtroom.

The very nature of psychiatry seeks to modify emotions and behavior, whether through therapy, medications, electroshock and other methods, and the doctor-
patient relationship revolves around a paternalistic imbalance of power. Psychiatrists label their patients as compliant or noncompliant to characterize whether or not the psychiatrist’s power has been accepted.

The doctrine of informed consent theoretically gives a patient information about a treatment, and the right to refuse treatment for any reason. But the doctrine hinges on the patient’s competence, and in psychiatry, the concept of competence is often used to reassert the psychiatrist’s power.

In many states, a person’s competence can be decided by the views of one psychiatrist. Some states require a second opinion, though it’s rare that in a simple competency hearing one doctor will disagree with another. In the court system, psychiatrists are given even more power and it would take a unique judge to listen to a patient - particularly a psychiatric patient - over a doctor.

Consider a case of forced electroshock involving an elderly woman in St. Louis, Missouri in August, 2000.

Kathleen Garrett was a woman in her 60s, recently widowed and undergoing treatment for breast cancer, as well as enduring a recent estrangement from one of her sons. Most women in such circumstances would find themselves with feelings of grief, if not downright depressed. Mrs. Garrett, with a lifelong history of episodic depression, did become depressed. Her psychiatrist adjusted her medications, but the depression remained. He then told her she needed to have electroconvulsive therapy, or electroshock. Mrs. Garrett refused, and immediately transformed into a “noncompliant patient.”

Instead of spending time discussing other options or why she didn’t want electroshock, her psychiatrist rushed into court, told the judge that he knew best, and that Mrs. Garrett was not competent to make such a decision. He didn’t mention that until the moment she said no, he considered her competent to make the decision.

Mrs. Garrett had very little time to put together a legal defense, and her Social Security income limited her access to an experienced attorney. The judge quickly ruled against her, ordering the doctor to begin electroshock treatments against her will. Mrs. Garrett would have been just another silent victim of the abuse of psychiatric power, but a loud and angry e-mail campaign against the doctor and hospital focused negative attention on her plight, and she was released from the hospital before completing the full series of treatments against her will.

Psychiatric patients often find themselves labeled noncompliant if they dare to speak back to their doctors, challenge his authority, or even ask questions. If a prescribed treatment, such as medication, is unsuccessful, the patient is again labeled noncompliant, with the psychiatrist just assuming that the patient has not followed directions. Psychiatric patients are at a distinct disadvantage because of the psychiatrists’ ability to use force to maintain the power structure.

Certainly “noncompliance” is a term used in other medical specialties, and doctors complain that patients with high blood pressure, diabetes, and other diseases sometimes do not take medications as directed. However, despite a potential life-threatening outcome, a person with high blood pressure won’t find herself plunged into a courtroom drama to force compliance. A woman with diabetes who skips an insulin injection, or decides she’s tired of the routine, will not open her door to a nurse with a hypodermic in hand.

Psychiatric patients often face scenarios like this once they threaten a psychiatrist’s power, and states are enacting laws making it easier to force “compliance,” such as Illinois SB0198, currently undergoing Senate review. As it went through the Rules Committee, the proposed bill has had its language changed from “cause serious harm to self or others” to “engage in dangerous conduct.” Past experience has shown that dangerous conduct could be anything from eating unhealthy foods to disagreeing with a psychiatrists’ order to take medications despite having caused dangerous side effects in the patient’s past. Or dangerous conduct, more often, would simply be a “noncompliant patient.”

A mental health rights activist once said that if someone prepares a buffet of delicious, healthy food, people will come. But if that buffet serves food that makes people feel sick, they won’t return. It is an excellent analogy, and one that needs attention in the world of psychiatry. Too often, patients who tell their psychiatrists that the medications make them feel worse than their original symptoms made them feel are quickly tossed into the basket of “noncompliant patients.” The atmosphere quickly shifts from the psychiatrist’s comfortable balance of “Doctor says, patient obeys,” to one of “I am the expert, you must do as I say.” It can easily disintegrate into the psychiatrist labeling the patient incompetent, because she did not submit to his power and authority.

Experienced patients quickly learn they have a choice: they can submit and follow orders, or they can play “the game.” Most psychiatric patients fully understand that the game involves pretending to do exactly as ordered, and to put on an air of gratefulness. Unfortunately, this also means that the patient no longer confides in the psychiatrist with regard to symptoms, and their emotional disorders may grow worse. Alternately, the symptoms may abate on their own, as is common with psychiatric disorders. In the end, the doctor proclaims his methods are successful, he asserts his superiority, and the power game goes on. But under the surface of cooperative relationship, the truth reveals a relationship based on distrust and deception.

Psychiatrist Sally Satel, author of “PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine,” has written extensively about the need to maintain the status quo of doctor over patient. Her writings reveal her anger that women are trying to take control of their healthcare, particularly with regard to mental healthcare.

“But it is wrongheaded to confuse the need to know more - an imperative that will always be with us - with the unwarranted and poisonous notion that women are somehow second-class subjects in the world of medicine,” she writes.

She chastises health activists for interfering with “effective diagnosis and doctoring.”

Psychiatric patients are fighting back, however.

A growing movement of patients and ex-patients is demanding change in the system, and asking that patients be given a long-overdue voice and control of their healthcare choices. Not surprisingly, activists are not generally well-
received by psychiatrists. But psychiatrists still have their secret weapon, and it’s a weapon that the general public accepts without question: the issue of competence. To discredit an activist’s words, simply declare she is suffering from mental illness, and doesn’t know what’s best. Reassert psychiatry’s authority, and you have an effective method of discrediting just about anything.

The courts buy into it, because psychiatry has been given special status in the court system. The public buys into it, because they don’t have the experience to understand how paternalistic psychiatry is. And of course the medical industry buys into it because paternalism fits in with their views to “help” anyone who needs help, even when the help is intrusive, inappropriate and unwanted. The doctor knows best.

Psychiatry has a long way to go in moving into modern times. Psychiatrists want so badly to be taken seriously as medical doctors and legitimate scientists, but until they confront a history that is full of abuses, and a method that continues today to abuse authority, psychiatry will remain mired in an atmosphere of paternalism, controversy and resentment.

A Description of what it is like to have received ElectroConvulsive Therapy (ECT)

From an Extended letter sent to the Furious Seasons weblog

I had been in this locked ward for approx 20 days. My insurance, though I did not know it at the time, pooped out at 30.

And I hadn’t gotten better, I had gotten worse.

My doctor, who ran the hospital had unbeknownst to me called in my parents for a meeting, as well as the three doctors under him. All I knew was tonight I didn’t have my supper; instead one of the nurses helped me in the shower and bathed me because I was too catatonic to do so. She helped me get dressed and finally put on those slipper socks that all the inmates wear because our shoes had all been stripped of their laces.

She walked me out of the locked ward, stopping at the Christmas tree by the Nurses station in the main part, and let me touch an ornament. I smiled. We went into the doctor’s office and there was my mom, and dad sitting on a plushy bluish purple sofa, and three doctors I never saw before.

“Mr. and Mrs. S” went my doctor – “We’ve tried everything on your daughter but she is extremely depressed and still suicidal. We’ve tried several different drug therapies and nothing is working, and we are left with two things. She has ten days left on her insurance and if she is still like the way she is now, we will be forced to put her in a state hospital. Or we can try ECT”.

[...]

What was unusual was when they asked me who the President was; I thought it was Bill Clinton. But I got the other questions correct and maybe it’s a good thing to forget a few years of history.

But as the treatments went on, I noticed several things. I had a photographic memory prior. I could not recall huge events in my life. I would look at family pictures and know something happened but couldn’t recall it. Huge chunks of my adolescence and childhood went Poof! I also had the ability to recall in graphic detail every book I had ever read from “Green Eggs and Ham” to the last book I had been reading in the hospital which was of all weird things “ A Noonday Demon’. I had been a contestant on Jeopardy. Now I couldn’t even name the hosts name.

I couldn’t read anymore. I couldn’t even read a newspaper. I couldn’t watch TV. I forgot how to get to places I was driving to, even though I had been driving the same routes for years.

Now this may seem trivial. To some people, thinking the last president was Clinton could be a good thing. To some people forgetting horrible adolescence is a good thing.

But when you are a writer, someone who makes their LIVING out of writing, and cannot anymore its death.

[...]

Worth reading in full

The Coalition for the Abolition of Electroshock in Texas

As described on their site

We are a local and international coalition of citizens deeply concerned about the grievous harm done to individuals by the administration of electroconvulsive shock, ECT. We are committed to abolishing this cruel and dangerous practice in Texas, and we will not rest until we do!

An interesting little site with definite potential

Shock therapy 'barbaric'

From The Press of New Zealand

A Christchurch man says "barbaric" electric shock therapy failed to lift his depression but robbed him of treasured memories.

David O'Neill's health deteriorated in 2004 after a motorcycle accident damaged his liver, bladder and thyroid and sliced his spleen in two.

He had repeated admissions to hospital for complications of his injuries and a series of unsuccessful investigations to find the cause of his chronic abdominal pain.

The frequent hospital stays and constant pain took its toll on his mental health.

"I ended up suicidal," said O'Neill.

He was admitted to Hillmorton Hospital in 2005 for depression. On his second stay, a doctor recommended a 12-session course of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which O'Neill consented to.

"I cannot even remember being admitted to the hospital, never mind giving consent for the ECT," he said.

The treatment failed to lift his depression and it destroyed his memory. He has no recollection of his wedding day, the birth of his three children or even his childhood.

O'Neill, now 49, said that before his accident he had cared for his wife – paralysed in a 1985 car accident – and raised their three children.

"Now I can't do anything. I feel as if I'm above myself all the time. I don't feel pain; I'm emotion-free," he said.

ECT was "barbaric" and should be banned, he said.

His family is dismayed it was not consulted and says O'Neill was not well enough to give properly informed consent.

Daughter Julieanne O'Neill said her father no longer felt any love for his family, including his two-year-old grandson.

"My dad has no feelings for him, no feelings for his family. He doesn't feel anything for himself. He is living in an empty shell," she said. "It has taken every single bit of my dad that was ever there away from him."

She said some doctors appeared to see ECT as "the quickest and easiest" solution. "But it's not them that has to go home and have this zombie person to cope with."

Mary O'Neill said the shock treatment had stolen the husband she had known.

Psychiatric Consumers Trust advocate Liz Henderson said ECT could lift depression and transform the lives of patients. "There is a place for it."

But it had clearly failed O'Neill.

"It has compounded what was already a difficult situation," Henderson said.

Henderson was concerned that consent was gained without his family's involvement. "He wasn't well enough to make that decision."

Vince Barry, general manager of Canterbury District Health Board mental health services, would not discuss individual patients.

However, he said it was the responsibility of clinicians to determine whether a patient was able to understand the pros and cons of ECT. "It would be unusual for someone to be given ECT without a discussion between the clinical team and close family members," he said.

The Health and Disability Commissioner has decided against a formal investigation of O'Neill's case and referred him to an advocate.

The Accident Compensation Corporation has refused his treatment injury claim, ruling that the ECT did not cause a physical injury.

ECT statistics (July 2004-June 2005):

307 patients given ECT (79 in Canterbury).

22 per cent did not give consent.

0.4% of mental health patients given ECT nationally.

1.1% of Canterbury mental health patients given ECT.

Described by the Health Ministry as "a valuable and sometimes life-saving" treatment.

We remain skeptical

Shock treatment sought for autistic man

As seen in the Ledger Enquirer and on CBS News

Bradley Bernstein's parents say an electric cattle prod is the only thing that stops him from banging his head and violently punching his eyes, nearly blinding himself.

The Illinois couple's fight to continue shock treatment on their severely autistic 48-year-old son and the uproar over a Massachusetts school that uses similar treatment, have pulled back the curtain on this extreme form of behavior modification. Critics call it outmoded, barbaric and unethical.

Even a leading supporter of the technique, Harvard-educated psychologist Matthew Israel, acknowledges, "The natural reaction is to be horrified."

"It always has been very controversial and is not politically correct, and if you want to advance your career, you try to stay away from it," said Israel, founder and director of the Judge Rotenberg Center, a residential school in Canton, Mass. The institution houses children and adults with autism, mental retardation and other behavioral and psychiatric disorders.

The school is under legislative and regulatory scrutiny for routinely using skin shocks on about half its 230 students to stop serious behavior problems, including self-injury.

Electric shocks and other painful or unpleasant treatments known as "aversive conditioning" were accepted more a generation ago. But mainstream psychiatry relies on new drugs and other methods that have proven effective.

Using this form of shock therapy is "cruel and unusual punishment," said Dr. Louis Kraus, an associate professor of psychiatry at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center. "The concept of doing that is frightening."

Some states, including Illinois last year, have banned or severely restricted use of electric shocks in mental health treatment.

But Israel favors the technique over psychiatric drugs that he says make students too drowsy to learn and says most critics "have never seen children who have blinded themselves, or banged their head to the point of brain injury, or bit a hole in their cheek."

Israel developed a device he calls a graduated electronic decelerator. It's carried in backpacks students at his school wear, and elicits shocks through electrodes strapped on their arms and legs.

"The beauty of it is there's no side effects," Israel said. "It's a temporary painful experience for two seconds."

His school's techniques are the subject of a bill pending in the Massachusetts Legislature and complaints including a lawsuit by a New York mother who says the shocks traumatized her now 18-year-old son.

The device used on Bradley Bernstein is a cattle prod. It used to be a long electrified rod, but the newer model is a handheld shocker about the size of a portable phone, with two short metal prongs.

Fran Bernstein, his mother, says it delivers a shock about as painful as a bee sting. Critics say it's considerably stronger, akin to sticking a finger in an electric socket.

Often just seeing the device was enough to make Bradley stop hurting himself, Mrs. Bernstein said.

Bradley Bernstein only says a few words and sometimes hurts himself in frustration or opposition to his caretakers' demands, his mother said. He is allergic to several drugs that could calm his behavior, she said.

The Bernsteins are fighting a Cook County judge's March 2 ruling that said Bradley's shock treatment violates an amendment to state law passed last May.

"Now we're not going to be able to control him and we don't know what's going to happen," said Mrs. Bernstein, of suburban Lincolnshire, Ill.

A therapist recommended the shocks when Bradley was a boy and he got the treatment routinely in group homes where he lived until the state law was enacted last year, his mother said.

Specialists at Trinity Services Inc., which took over the agency that used to care for Bradley, oppose shock treatment and helped change the law so it and other painful techniques are banned from group homes.

"This is something that our professional staff doesn't believe is ethical," said Trinity's president, Art Dykstra.

Bradley Bernstein is the only group home patient in Illinois known to have received shock treatment in recent years. His parents agreed to a compromise to gradually stop the treatment, but sued when Trinity officials abruptly stopped it after the law changed, according to the their attorney, Robert O'Donnell.

The judge's recent ruling said the change in Illinois law makes the Bernsteins' complaint moot. O'Donnell is appealing and has enlisted Matthew Israel to help evaluate Bradley and determine whether his shock treatment should resume.[...]

Trinity officials dispute the Bernsteins' claim that their son's behavior has grown worse without the shocks. [...]

Electroconvulsive Therapy Causes Permanent Amnesia And Cognitive Deficits, Prominent Researcher Admits

As seen at the Virtual Psych Center Website (typically a pro psychiatry website)

Abstract

In a stunning reversal, an article in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology in January 2007 by prominent researcher Harold Sackeim of Columbia University reveals that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) causes permanent amnesia and permanent deficits in cognitive abilities, which affect individuals' ability to function.

"This study provides the first evidence in a large, prospective sample that adverse cognitive effects can persist for an extended period, and that they characterize routine treatment with ECT in community settings," the study notes.

Complete Article

For the past 25 years, ECT patients were told by Sackeim, the nation's top ECT researcher, that the controversial treatment doesn't cause permanent amnesia and, in fact, improves memory and increases intelligence. Psychologist Sackeim also taught a generation of ECT practitioners that permanent amnesia from ECT is so rare that it could not be studied. He asserted that most people who said the treatment erased years of memory were mentally ill and thus not credible.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) estimates that more than 3 million people have received ECT over the past generation. "Those patients who reported permanent adverse effects on cognition have now had their experiences validated," said Linda Andre, head of the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry, a national organization of ECT recipients.

Since the mid-1980s, Sackeim worked as a consultant to the ECT device manufacturer Mecta Corp. He never revealed his financial interest in ECT to NIMH, as required by federal law, and, until 2002, did not reveal it to New York officials as required by state law. Neuropsychopharmacology has endured negative publicity over its failure to disclose financial conflicts of journal authors, resulting in the editor's resignation and a promise to disclose such conflicts in the future; yet there is no disclosure of Sackeim's long-term relationship with Mecta, nor did Sackeim disclose his financial conflict when his NIMH grant was renewed to 2009 at approximately $500,000 per year.

The six-month study followed about 250 patients in New York City hospitals, an unusually large number; most ECT studies are based on 20 to 30 patients. Sackeim's previously published studies were short term, making it impossible to assess long-term effects. "However, in other contexts over the years -- court depositions, communications with mental health officials, and grant protocols -- Sackeim has claimed to follow up patients for as long as five years. This raises serious questions as to how long he has actually known of the existence and prevalence of permanent amnesia and why it wasn't revealed until now," Andre said.

Besides finding that ECT routinely causes substantial and permanent amnesia, the study contradicts Sackeim's oft-published statements that ECT increases intelligence and that patients who report permanent adverse effects are mentally ill.

"The study is a stunning self-repudiation of a 25-year career," Andre said.

(Source: Neuropsychopharmacology : Columbia University : January 2007.)

Psychiatrist defends electric shock treatment in New South Wales

Anothe mad doctor who beleives in the theraputic values of high voltage brain damage, as seen in this report

The chief psychiatrist in New South Wales has defended the use of electric shock therapy in the state's hospitals.

Government figures show the use of electric shock therapy has doubled in NSW in the past decade and more than a dozen children under the age of 14 have been given the treatment.

But Associate Professor John Basson says the perceived increase is not accurate because records of electric shock therapy were not reliable a decade ago and did not reflect the true number of cases.

He says there is no recorded cases of children receiving the treatment in the past two years, but his colleagues would not support a ban on the practice.

"Across the board they wouldn't wish to lose it as a possible treatment in very, very rare and unusual cases where the life of the child was put at risk," he said.

"This would be a treatment of extremely last resort.

"Recently we've been very much more scrupulous and that plays a part.

"You've got to be careful that we're not comparing apples with oranges. We've got to compare apples with apples and we are now in a situation where we can compare.

"I don't see that sort of increase that would cause us concern or would cause us to question."

The various amounts of electricity used in Electro Shock Therapy

The various amounts of electricity used in Electro Shock Therapy, according to several sources, as seen here:

Bibliographic Entry	Result (w/surrounding text)	Standardized Result
"Electroconvulsive therapy." The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology. 3rd ed. England: Penguin Books, 2001.	"The technique consists of applying a weak electric currrent (20-30 mA) bilaterally to the temperofrontal region of the skull until a grand mal seizure results."	0.02 - 0.03 A
Fink, Max. Electroshock: Restoring the Mind. New York: Oxford, 1999.	"Modern electroshock uses a square-wave form of energy, which has a slight, if any, effect on memory. The frequency of the square waves varies from 30 to 70 cycles per second, with a pulse width of 0.5, 1.0, or 2.0 milliseconds. The duration of stimulation varies between 0.2 and 8.0 seconds, and delivers from 25-500 millicoulombs of energy."	0.0625 - 0.125 A
R. Breggin, Peter. Electroshock: Its Brain Disabling Effects. USA: Springer Publishing Company, 1979.	"The amount of current varies widely from machine to machine and from clinician to clinician (Davies et al. 1971). Kalinowsky (1957b) described a range of 70 to 130 volts (V) for 0.1 to 0.5 sec, with a delivered current varying from 200 to 1600 milliamperes (mA)."	0.2 - 1.6 A
Collins, Meghan. "ECT: Electroconvulsive Therapy." 30 September 2002.	"An AC current is passed up to 6 seconds. The current ranges from 800 mA - 1000 mA, carrying a voltage between 300-500 volts."	0.8 - 1.0 A
Stevens, Lawrence. Psychiatry's Electroconvulsive Shock Treatment: A Crime Against Humanity. The Antipsychiatry Coalition.	"ECT consists of electricity being passed through the brain with a force of from 70 to 400 volts and an amperage of from 200 milliamperes to 1.6 amperes (1600 milliamperes)."	0.2 - 1.6 A

Electroshock therapy, commonly known as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a medical procedure for severe mental illnesses such as mania or schizophrenia. During the actual procedure, electrodes are put on the sides of the patient's head at the temples. An alternating electrical current is sent through the brain. It lasts for a few seconds. In electroshock therapy the patient requires the least amount of electricity to induce a mild seizure.

This procedure is very controversial because it may cause severe brain damage and memory loss. It is not used very much today. There are many risks in running an electric current through a person's brain including brain damage, disturbances in the heart and even death.

The electric current varies from patient to patient and machine to machine. In one source the electric current was as high as 0.8 - 1.0 amperes. This could be more than enough to kill a human if it were applied across the chest. Since it's applied through the brain it is less fatal. [...] The highest amount of electrical current found in one source was 1.6 amperes.

We also have this chart about the amount of Electricity needed to Kill a Human Being:

Bibliographic Entry	Result (w/surrounding text)	Standardized Result
Cutnell, John D., Johnson, Kenneth W. Physics. 4th ed. New York, NY: Wiley, 1998.	"Currents of approximately 0.2 A are potentially fatal, because they can make the heart fibrillate, or beat in an uncontrolled manner."	0.2 A
Carr, Joseph J. Safety for electronic hobbyists. Popular Electronics. October 1997. as found in Britannica.com.	"In general, for limb-contact electrical shocks, accepted rules of thumb are: 1-5 mA is the level of perception; 10 mA is the level where pain is sensed; at 100 mA severe muscular contraction occurs, and at 100-300 mA electrocution occurs."	0.1 - 0.3 A
"Electrical Injuries." The Merck Manual of Medical Information: Home Edition. Pennsylvania: Merck, 1997.	"At currents as low as 60 to 100 milliamperes, low-voltage (110-220 volts), 60-hertz alternating current traveling through the chest for a split second can cause life-threatening irregular heart rhythms. About 300-500 milliamperes of direct current is needed to have the same effect."	0.06 - 0.1 A (AC) 0.3 - 0.5 A (DC)
Zitzewitz, Paul W., Neff, Robert F. Merrill Physics, Principles and Problems. New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 1995.	"The damage caused by electric shock depends on the current flowing through the body -- 1 mA can be felt; 5 mA is painful. Above 15 mA, a person loses muscle control, and 70 mA can be fatal."	0.07 A
Watson, George. SCEN 103 Class 12. University of Delaware. March 8, 1999.	"0.10 death due to fibrillation > 0.20 no fibrillation, but severe burning, no breathing"	0.1 - 0.2 A
Miller, Rex. Industrial Electricity Handbook. Peoria, IL: Chas. A. Bennet, 1993.	"Currents between 100 and 200 mA are lethal."	0.1 - 0.2 A

A common misconception is that larger voltages are more dangerous than smaller ones. However, this is not quite true. The danger to living things comes not from the potential difference, but rather the current flowing between two points. The reason that people may believe this can be explained by the equation V = IR. Since V is directly proportional to I, an increase in voltage can mean an increase in current, if resistance (R) is kept constant.

The amount of damage done by the electric shock depends not only on the magnitude of the current, but it also on which portions of the body that the electric current is flowing through. The reason for this is that different parts of the body have difference resistances, which can lead to an increase in current, evidenced by the formula V = IR.

An interesting fact to note is that it takes less alternating current (AC) to do the same damage as direct current (DC). AC will cause muscles to contract, and if the current were high enough, one would not be able to let go of whatever is causing the current coursing through the body. The cut-off value for this is known as the "let-go current". For women, it is typically 5 to 7 milliamperes, and for men, typically 7 to 9 milliamperes. This is dependent on the muscle mass of the individual.

In general, current that is fatal to humans ranges from 0.06 A to 0.07 A, depending on the person and the type of current.

Readers are free to compare notes and to draw their own conclusions.