Posts Tagged ‘ECT’

Psychiatrist Peter Breggin debunks myth that Electroshock is improved, safe and/or effective in this series

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Psychiatric Drug Facts
Dr. Peter Breggin

By far the most up-to-date information of the dangers associated with ECT can be found in a chapter in Dr. Breggin’s book, Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex, Second Edition (2008). Dr. Breggin brings together and evaluates dozens of articles demonstrating permanent brain damage from ECT including irreversible severe memory loss and wide spread cognitive disabilities. Many patients lose their ability to practice their professions or to conduct their lives in a normal fashion. Dr. Breggin was the medical expert in the first and only electroshock malpractice suit won by the injured patient. He was also the expert in a recent malpractice suit against an ECT doctor that resulted in a settlement of more than $1 million.

In 2007 a long-term follow-up study of ECT patients conducted by a team of shock-advocates lead by Harold Sackeim confirmed Dr. Breggin’s observations that the “treatment” is devastating to the mental functions, frequently causing dementia with permanent disruption of memory and a variety of other cognitive functions.

The acronym ECT stands for “Electro Convulsive Therapy” (also called EST, for Electro Shock Therapy) a psychiatric treatment in which electricity is applied to the head and passed through the brain to produce a grand mal or major convulsion. The seizure brought about by the electric stimulus closely resembles, but is more rigorous or strenuous than that found in idiopathic epilepsy or in epilepsy following a wide variety of insults to the brain.

Read entire article: http://breggin.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=40&Itemid=52

« Return to news items


Share

Woman describes devastating results of electroshock – calling it a human rights abuse that psychiatry gets away with

Monday, December 7th, 2009

The Irish Times
December 7, 2009

MARY MADDOCK (62) doesn’t remember anything about the first time she received electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Memory loss was the biggest side-effect of the treatment. In fact, she says, she has lost entire chunks of her life.

“It completely wiped everything out,” she says. “I spent eight weeks in the psychiatric hospital and most of it is gone. I don’t remember where I ate or slept or who came to see me.”

Mary had given birth to her daughter Claire two weeks earlier. Doctors believed she was suffering from a form of post-natal depression, but she had no history of psychiatric problems or depression.

She remembers more about the second time she underwent ECT, in the late 1980s. “I remember the cylinders for the electric shock; I remember them taking your pillow, so they had better access to your head, taking the anaesthetic and counting backwards until you were knocked out.

“It was a very scary thing to be part of, not knowing what was happening and then waking up with the most awful pain in your head like you wouldn’t believe. And not remembering things which had happened recently. It was like a big chunk of your life being taken away.

“This is why I can’t even remember holding Claire in my arms for the first time. It breaks my heart.”

Read entire article: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/1207/1224260241533.html

« Return to news items


Share

Believe it or not, NAMI says ‘safest way to treat severe depression in a pregnant woman is probably electroconvulsive (ECT) therapy’

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Believe it or not, The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI),a “patient’s rights group” for the mentally ill, is promoting Electroshock (ECT) for pregnant women as safe and effective. NAMI has recently been exposed for their extensive Pharma funding (3/4 of their donations; $23 million came from Pharma ) which may help explain their long standing promotion and fierce endorsement of psychiatric drugs which they are now attempting to downplay after being the subject of a Senate investigation. Not surprising then is the fact that NAMI also lists Cyberonics, an ECT machine manufacturer as one of NAMI’s Corporate Sponsor in 2008.

From NAMI’s website “The safest way to treat severe depression in a pregnant woman is probably electroconvulsive (ECT) therapy. Patients and families are sometimes frightened by the idea of “shock treatment,” but in fact ECT is safer than antidepressant medication for a depressed pregnant woman. It can be used during any state of pregnancy, but is less risky after the first trimester. The most common side effect of ECT is short term memory loss. Less frequent side effects usually respond to simple treatment. These may include: headaches, mild muscle soreness, nausea, adverse reactions to anesthetic or muscle relaxants, and heartbeat irregularities.

Read entire article: http://www.nami.org/Content/ContentGroups/Helpline1/Pregnancy_Pointers_for_Women_with_Psychiatric_History.htm

« Return to news items


Share

Irish Times: “Tinseltown gets the big picture on psychiatry – it sucks”

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

Irish Times.com
October 24, 2009

LOS ANGELES LETTER: “PSYCHIATRY: AN Industry of Death” is the name of a museum on Sunset Boulevard. For several hours you can roam a dungeon-style premises that delivers a clear and sustained message: psychiatry sucks, writes JOHN FLEMING.

As the LA palm trees outside overstretch themselves into the blue sky and six lanes of flash cars and pick-up trucks roar past, you are sealed into a theatrical world of condemnation.

In a stage set of straitjackets, restraining tables and human cattle-prods, a versioned world of psychiatry’s lobotomies, ECT and involuntary commitments is vividly dramatised.

Fourteen of Hollywood’s most secret short films and hundreds of dark exhibits sketch a shameful history of the profession, blaming it for racism, the Holocaust, botched psychosurgery and a world dependent on the pharmaceutical industry.

Read entire article: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/1024/1224257390508.html

« Return to news items


Share

Now Psychs are recommending Electroshock for pregnant women who are depressed. Yep. Electroshock.

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Shirley S. Wang
The Wall Street Journal
August 21, 2009

Pregnant women should consider psychotherapy as an alternative to antidepressants, but those with more severe or recurrent bouts of depression should remain on their meds during pregnancy, according to a new report from two big physicians’ groups.

But there’s an alternative treatment for the sickest depressed women, the guidelines say: electroconvulsive therapy, often called shock therapy.

ECT, which involves an electric current that induces a seizure in the brain, has been “long regarded as a safe and effective treatment for severe depression in pregnancy,” the guidelines say.

Read enite article: http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/08/21/antidepressant-alternative-for-pregnant-women-shock-therapy/

« Return to news items


Share

Chinese Health Ministry: Internet addicts should stop receiving electroshock therapy because it doesn’t work.

Sunday, July 26th, 2009

Desta Bishu
Ethiopian Review
July 26, 2009

Internet addicts should stop receiving electroshock therapy because it doesn’t work, the Chinese Health Ministry says.

Nearly 3000 youths have undergone electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, or electroshock) at Linyi Mental Health Hospital, resident psychiatrist Yang Yongxin told the China Youth Daily.

The hospital, based in eastern Shandong, runs a four-month web rehab program which includes medicine and counselling for a monthly fee of 5500 yuan ($1025).

Read entire article: http://www.ethiopianreview.com/articles/18115

« Return to news items


Share