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Mental health services have become increasingly dominated by psychiatry’s ”medical model”

admin — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:55:06 +0000

The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia – “With More Talk in Mind” – Sep 15, 2011

by Dr. John Reed, Professor of Clinical Psychology

SERIOUS problems in Victoria’s mental health system have been revealed recently in The Age. The important thing now is to find solutions. In doing so we should remember that although Victoria is in the spotlight, similar ”crises” occur regularly all over the world. Perhaps this is because Victoria is not alone in having a system based on fundamentally flawed principles.

Mental health services have become increasingly dominated by psychiatry’s ”medical model”, which claims that feeling depressed, anxious or paranoid is primarily caused by genetic predispositions and chemical imbalances.

This has led to alarming rises in chemical solutions to distress. In New Zealand, one in nine adults (and one in five women) is prescribed antidepressants every year.

The public, however, in every country studied, including Australia, believes that mental health problems are caused by issues such as stress, poverty and isolation. The public also prefers talking therapies to drugs and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

Research suggests the public is right. For example, the single best predictor of just about every mental health problem is poverty, followed by other social factors such as abuse, neglect and early loss of parents in childhood, and – once in adulthood – loneliness and a range of adverse events including losses and defeats of various kinds.

Meanwhile, reviews of studies on anti-depressants (which only recently have been able to include those previously kept secret by drug companies) conclude that they are superior to placebos only for those at the extreme end of the ”most severe” group of depressed people. This represents less than 10 per cent of the people who are receiving these drugs.

A recent Cochrane review (the type most highly regarded in the scientific community) for risperidone, a leading anti-psychotic drug, ”suggests that there is no clear difference between risperidone and [a] placebo”.

A placebo (from the Latin meaning ”I please”) is not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed the talking therapies are effective partly because, if done well, they too instil hope and expectations of recovery.

The problem is that psychiatric drugs often have serious adverse effects. Anti-psychotics, for instance, can cause rapid weight gain, loss of sexual function, diabetes, heart disease, neurodegeneration and reduced life span.

As previously reported, my review of ECT studies (with Professor Richard Bentall of Liverpool University) found that this treatment is ineffective for most recipients and frequently causes permanent memory loss. This in itself can be depressing.

ECT also has a slight but significant risk of death, most frequently from cardiovascular failure.

Inpatient units are equally ineffective and can also be damaging. When will we learn that putting large numbers of extremely distressed people in the same building is not a good idea?

What I conclude from all this is that any review of mental health services in Victoria, or anywhere else for that matter, should probably be led by anyone other than a psychiatrist – and certainly not in Victoria’s case the state’s Chief Psychiatrist, whose job, according to Dr Ruth Vine herself, is “to watch over how the system is functioning”.

It is unfair to expect Dr Vine to take an objective view on the failure of the system for which she is responsible. That lack of objectivity is amply demonstrated by her claims that ECT is “safe and effective” and that the problem is the public’s “negative” views.

Perhaps a lawyer from the Mental Health Legal Centre might be a good choice.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/with-more-talk-in-mind-20110914-1k9m2.html#ixzz1Y8tVJQlv

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In Australia – Electric shock therapy on the rise for young

admin — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 15:12:11 +0000

Note from CCHR: More than 1 million people are electroshocked every year, including children, the elderly and pregnant women. This is simply a brutal, invasive and damaging ‘treatment’ where up to 450 volts of electricity are sent through the skull. Psychiatrists admit they don’t know how electroshock ‘works’ and the reason behind this is simple: it doesn’t work. Not unless you consider cognitive impairment, brain seizures, permament memory loss and death ‘workable.’ Now in Australia, the use of electroshock for the young is on the rise. Mentioned in this article are the atrocities that were committed in Chelmsford psychiatric hospital where patients were put into drugged induced coma’s and electroshocked, killing dozens. That lethal and inhumane practice was exposed and then banned due to the efforts of CCHR. No organization has done more to expose the deadly practice of electroshock, or helped enact more international laws restricting or prohibiting its use, than CCHR. To get the facts about electroshock ‘treatment’ read this article by psychologist John Breeding, “Think They Don’t Electroshock People Anymore? Think Again” http://qr.net/edoh

Sydney Morning Herald – June 26, 2011

by Natalie O’Brien

Revelations about the practises at Chelmsford and the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest led to a major drop in treatments.

ELECTRIC shock treatments for mental health patients have increased by almost 30 per cent in the past five years in NSW, particularly among young women, Medicare figures show.Female patients – all aged under 24 – received almost 600 procedures last year, more than twice the rate of young women in Victoria.

The trend has sparked concern among some psychiatrists about the ”start of a slippery slope”.

An investigation by The Sun-Herald into the resurgence of the treatment, also known as electro-convulsive therapy, or ECT, reveals that the number of voluntary sessions received by young women rose from 184 in 2000 to 575 last year.

The figures do not specify how many women were involved in the procedures, as one patient can often undergo more than one session.

Electric shock treatment still carries the stigma from its brutal portrayal in the film One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and from the Sydney experience of the horrific practices at the Chelmsford Hospital in the 1960s and ’70s, where dozens of patients died after being given deep sleep therapy and ECT. But doctors say they are working with new treatments and patients no longer suffer a physical convulsion.

The Medicare figures show that last year, NSW men aged under 24 were given the therapy at three times the rate of men in that age group in Victoria.

Across Australia, 24,714 ECT sessions were administered to patients of all ages. In NSW, 5733 treatments were carried out – slightly fewer than in Victoria.

A former president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, Dr Jonathan Phillips, who works as a private clinician, said he was worried by the number of sessions younger people had undertaken.

”In a way it is very easy to order ECT treatment,” he said. ”I would not like to think that it is being used just because it’s easy.”

He was especially surprised by the rate of young women receiving the treatment and said he would find it hard to explain.

”I don’t know why there is a such a difference in statistics. I do hope it is not the start of the slippery slope. Are we going back to an era where we resort to ECT rather than talking to people and using the art of psychiatry?

Read the rest of the article here - http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/electric-shock-therapy-on-the-rise-for-young-20110625-1gklc.html#ixzz1QIdHnpE0

To get the FACTS about electroshock, watch this video:

Electroshock — It’s Not Treatment, It’s Torture

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDR3cD8_kck&feature=channel_video_title

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At annual convention, psychiatrists collaborate on mental disease mongering to boost profits

admin — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 11:55:07 +0000

Natural News – June 8, 2011

by Monica G. Young

While sipping drinks from coconut shells, psychiatrists from around the world recently met in Honolulu to discuss more ways to capitalize on human behavior and promote drug dependency. The occasion was the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), held in a Hawaiian convention center lined with mental disorder displays and pharmaceutical booths.

“Hot” topics (potential markets for social control and drug pushing) included:

1) Mental health issues during a woman’s reproductive cycle, such as “treating” pregnant women for bipolar – a disorder said to cause unusual shifts in mood and energy levels. In speaking to Medscape News, an APA committee co-chair, Dr. Don Hilty, called this “a really nice-growing area.”

Yet most every woman experiences mood and energy shifts during pregnancy. Despite this, it is not uncommon for pregnant women to be diagnosed as bipolar and prescribed antipsychotics, some of the most powerful drugs on the market. Even the FDA website alerts doctors to “be aware of the effects of antipsychotic medications on newborns when the medications are used during pregnancy.” The site warns of abnormal muscle movements and withdrawal symptoms, and the FDA’s adverse effects reporting program (Medwatch) includes cerebral hemorrhage, heart malformations and death as documented reactions in newborns. Similarly, studies show birth defects and other serious risks for infants whose mothers took antidepressants while pregnant.

2) Childhood disorders were a particularly popular issue at the convention. But they didn’t stop there – prenatal and newborn genetic screening for mental illness has taken on new emphasis in the psychiatric world. “It’s also trying to understand how genetics predict what medications can be used,” stated APA’s Dr. Hilty.

Having already labeled millions of kids “abnormal” and drenched their brains in toxic substances – a multi-billion dollar business – apparently they aren’t satisfied. They aim to brand children as mental patients and destine them for drug-dependency before they’re even born.

The conference even touched upon electroconvulsive shock therapy (ECT) for children – sending electric volts through their heads. That will teach ‘em to shut up and sit still! It will also cause permanent brain damage.

3) ADHD is usually promoted as a childhood disorder but a team of psychiatrists proposed a new definition to make it easier to diagnose (and drug) older teens and adults. They claim people who tend to miss work deadlines and interrupt others deserve this label.

This would surely lead to millions more on daily meds. Who doesn’t know co-workers who miss deadlines or even friends who interrupt you? Not emphasized however is that, per a study published in The Clinical Neuropsychologist, one in four adults seeking an ADHD diagnosis fake it to obtain stimulant drugs.

4) Capitalizing on America’s service men and women was another hot one: diagnosing and drugging the military for post-traumatic distress disorder, depression and anxiety.

Did they mention that 18 U.S. veterans commit suicide daily, largely due to psychiatric drugs? Not likely. As reported by Neev M. Arnell in NaturalNews, “the increasingly high number of deaths among both veterans and active duty soldiers-including suicides, accidental overdose, and lethal drug interactions-have now been linked to the exponential increase in the prescribing of drugs for post traumatic stress disorder, depression and other psychological illnesses.” (http://www.naturalnews.com/032598_v…)

5) Anticipating the “silver tsunami” as the Baby Boomer generation moves into the over-65 bracket, psychiatrists stressed the need for more psychiatric services for the elderly.

Not stressed, if mentioned at all, is the rampant over-use of psychiatric drugs in nursing homes. Elderly patients’ reactions to physical ailments are often squelched with mind-altering drugs. And a recently released government audit shows nearly one in seven elderly nursing home residents are given antipsychotics – nearly all of them dementia patients for whom the drugs can be lethal. Many lawsuits and settlements have revealed that drug companies have falsely promoted these drugs to doctors and nursing homes for years.

6) While not on the “hot” list, another issue that bit was bedbugs. A New York psychiatrist and his colleagues presented a detailed study showing bedbugs can trigger anxiety.

What a remarkable – and potentially profitable – discovery! Gee, with the rise in bedbug infestation in New York City, maybe Bedbug Anxiety should be included in the next edition of the DSM (psychiatry’s diagnostic and billing bible).

Father of psychiatry – the bloodletter

The American Psychiatric Association calls itself “the voice and conscience of modern psychiatry.”

Adorning the convention hall was the APA logo which enshrines Dr. Benjamin Rush (1746-1813) as the father of psychiatry. A very influential doctor, teacher and statesman of his time, Rush propagated his theory that Blacks suffered from an inherited disease called “Negritude.” The only evidence of a cure, he said, was the skin turning white. He warned, “whites should not intermarry with them, for this would tend to infect posterity with the ‘disorder.’” Whites, seeking not to be “infected,” used this fabled disease to justify segregation.

Rush was also a chief proponent of bloodletting as a cure-all for mental and physical illnesses. Widespread in America in those days, he made lots of money at it. One of Rush’s students applied his teachings to a patient who complained of a sore throat: nine pints of blood were removed from the man’s body in twenty-four hours and he died. That patient was George Washington, the first President of the United States.

Sources for this article include:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle…

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle…

http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/…

http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/…

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/h…

http://www.jstor.org/pss/985399

http://www.websters-online-dictiona…

http://www.cchr.org/cchr-reports/cr…

About the author:
Monica G. Young is a human rights investigator and educational writer with a purpose to expose the truth about the pharmaceutical and psychiatric industries and safeguard human liberty. She encourages non-drug alternative approaches based on healthy lifestyles and human decency. She supports the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and like-minded groups.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032638_psychiatrists_disease_mongering.html#ixzz1OgRDAmhA

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Survivors and supporters push for a ban on electroshock therapy in Ontario

cchrint — Mon, 09 May 2011 16:20:36 +0000

Rabble.ca
By John Bonnar
May 9, 2011

When Dorothy Washburn Dundas was 19 years old she became sad, felt lonely and attempted suicide by swallowing a half a bottle of aspirin. Her parents took her to the Massachusetts General Hospital where Dundas began what she called her “three-year hellish odyssey as a prisoner of the mental-health system.”

She was transferred to Balpate Hospital, a drug treatment centre in Georgetown, MA, diagnosed with schizophrenia and, in spite of her opposition, given 50 shock treatments. Fourty insulin and ten superimposed electric shocks.

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Click here to see more photos from the rally and march

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In 1961, during the early morning hours, three other teenaged girls and Dundas began their insulin injections. On ten of those mornings a man wearing a dark suit and carrying a small suitcase set up his electroshock machine behind their heads. One by one, the girls were forced on to their backs.

“Bare, open and vulnerable,” said Dundas in a statement read by a spokesperson from the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault (CAPA) at Saturday’s fifth annual rally at Queen’s Park to raise awareness about the medical risks and sexist facts surrounding electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

Dundas was second in line to receive ECT. She would often sneak a look to see what the doctors were doing to Susan, the first girl to receive the treatment. When Susan would shake violently, she could no longer watch and had to turn away.

Waiting for her turn, Dundas would shiver in fear beneath the bed sheets. “I can still feel the sticky, cold jelly they put on my temples,” she said. Her arms and legs were held down and just before the doctor pushed the shock button he would ask, “Is everybody ready?”

“Each time I expected I would die,” she said.

Later, she’d wake up with a violent headache and nausea. Her mind was blurred and she permanently lost eight months of memory immediately preceding the shock treatments. But she was lucky.

On one of those cold winter mornings, her 17-year-old friend Susan never woke up after an ECT treatment. “When she died, she became a part of me,” said Dundas.

Dr. Bonnie Burstow, a researcher, therapist and Chair of the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault, said, “We demonstrate against ECT because it is an atrocity…on or around Mother’s Day because this is a deeply and profoundly sexist treatment. Two to three times as many women as men are shocked, even though women incur more damage from ECT than men do.”

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a procedure in which electric currents are passed through the brain, deliberately triggering a brief seizure to cause changes in brain chemistry that can immediately reverse symptoms of certain mental illnesses.

According to the Mayo Clinic, side effects can include confusion, memory loss, nausea, vomiting, headache, jaw pain, muscle ache or muscle spasms.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) estimates that in 2007, the procedure was used more than 15,000 times in this country. It’s endorsed by the Canadian Psychiatric Association that stated it is a safe and effective treatment for major depression and other severe mood disorders.

But Simon Adam, a nurse, educator and scientist, said he’s seen the effects of ECT on his patients and believes the procedure is dangerous and doesn’t help them at all.

A year ago, NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo introduced a private member’s bill to defund ECT in Ontario. CAPA and DiNovo would have preferred an outright ban, but DiNovo was forced to compromise after she received complaint letters from the psychiatric community and heard from patients who claimed they’d been helped by ECT.

“We know the same thing happened over lobotomies,” she said.

“We certainly know as women that the roots of gynecology were roots of abuse against women’s bodies. We know that the time will come for this as well.”

Every year, both new and familiar faces show up at the annual Mother’s Day weekend rally and march to abolish ECT.

“We will come again and again and again until we get rid of this,” said Burstow.

“We’re going to win this fight because that’s an atrocity, because we are the people and because unlike psychiatry which manufactures lies by the second, we stand in truth.”

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FDA Advisory Panel Recommends Electroshock Machine Too Risky For Reclassification to Less Dangerous Device

admin — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 21:08:43 +0000

A panel of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended Friday that devices used to deliver ECT, or psychiatric shock treatment, remain in the most high-risk category (Class III), reserved for the most dangerous medical devices.

January 31, 2011

by CCHR International— The Neurological Devices Advisory Panel of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.), recommended Friday that devices used to deliver shock treatment, also known as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) remain in the most high-risk category (Class III), reserved for the most dangerous medical devices and not be downgraded to a lower risk category. In so doing, it recommended that the companies which manufacture ECT devices be required to prove that ECT is both effective and safe in order to remain in use.

ECT has long been known to cause serious harm to patients, including extremely severe and permanent memory loss, inability to learn and remember new events, depression, suicide, cardiovascular complications, prolonged and dangerous seizures and even death.

Patients who have undergone ECT felt vindicated by the decision, saying the ECT device is dangerous and causes irreparable harm. The chairman of the advisory panel, Dr. Thomas G. Brott, a Professor of Neurosciences, at the Mayo Clinic expressed concern about 100,000 people being given ECT each year in the U.S., yet psychiatrists had not bothered to conduct MRI scans before and after the procedure to monitor potential brain damage.

Ms. Jan Eastgate, President of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a psychiatric watchdog, spoke at the Hearing and was critical of the ECT device manufacturers, Mecta and Somatics, Inc. for their failure to conduct safety studies and submit a Pre-Marketing Application (PMA), while making more than $30 million from sales of the machine over the past 3 decades. She said psychiatrists claiming that a PMA would be “too expensive” had put profit above patient safety— With ECT costing between $1,000 and $2,500 a treatment, psychiatrists had made more than $28 billion during the same period.

The hearings were prompted by a GAO investigation in January 2009 resulting in a report stating the FDA must examine all devices which had remained for a substantial time in Class III without critical evaluation of safety and effectiveness. The GAO said the FDA should take steps to ensure that high-risk device types are approved through the most stringent review process reserved for new machines coming on to the market which may be potentially dangerous.

The FDA Office of Medical Device Evaluation thereafter called for hearings before a panel of experts to advise the FDA whether shock devices could be downgraded to Class II – and therefore require little review – or remain in the highest risk category with a mandated approval process with stringent clinical trials. The FDA Advisory Panel agreed that this device was sufficiently dangerous to require that it remain in Class III. It is up to the FDA whether to act on the recommendations of the panel.

Ms. Eastgate said the decision is the first step towards getting needed greater protections for patients but said there were still considerable concerns about the F.D.A.’s handling of the safety and efficacy issues concerning ECT. She said there are potential conflicts of interest with psychiatrists helping write the F.D.A.’s Executive Summary on ECT and advising the agency about the procedure.

Watch video: Electroshock—It’s Not Treament, It’s Torture

here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDR3cD8_kck

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Not the Only Psychiatrist Who Opposes ECT

admin — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 05:45:01 +0000

The Huffington Post – January 26, 2011

by Dr. Peter Breggin

Peter R. Breggin, MD is a psychiatrist in private practice in Ithaca, New York, and the author of dozens of scientific articles and more than twenty books. His first medical book was about ECT: Electroshock: Its Brain-Disabling Effects (1979).

Duff Wilson provided a service by presenting both sides of the controversy when he wrote his report “F.D.A. Is Studying the Risk of Electroshock Devices” in the January 24, 2011 New York Times. The FDA is proposing to move ECT from the high risk category to the medium risk category to avoid the necessity of any testing for safety or efficacy. As a result, ECT would be grandfathered into continued use without ever being tested. This would place ECT in the same category as syringes which no longer need proof of safety or efficacy. The FDA hearings will be held January 27-28, 2011, and I hope some of my more courageous colleagues will attend and testify against approving ECT without testing.

Mr. Wilson quotes me correctly in the article: “It’s a big money-maker,” he [Breggin] said. “I would say if anything it’s been on the increase because there’s a market that’s been exploited, that is the elderly depressed women on Medicare. The reason for that is they’re covered, and there’s no one to protect them. What commonly stops shock treatment is a family member saying ‘over my dead body.’ ”

However, Mr. Wilson misunderstood what I meant to say when, without quoting me, he wrote in the original published edition that Breggin “says he is the only American psychiatrist he knows who opposes the treatment.” He and I have chatted since the publication of his article in the NYT and he has generously edited the current on-line copy of the article and posted a correction indicating that I actually said that I am the only psychiatrist I know of who publicly opposes the treatment. I don’t know anyone else who has taken a very visible public stand–publishing anti-ECT views in the scientific literature, and presenting them in the media and the courts. Similarly, I am the only psychiatrist to have testified in a successful ECT malpractice suit.

The same was true when I conducted my successful campaign to stop the resurgence of lobotomy and other forms of psychosurgery in the 1970s. At that time, most psychiatrists probably opposed lobotomy, but I was the first and still only one to oppose it publically in the scientific literature, the media, and the courts, as well as in Congressional testimony. The success of my campaign required putting outside pressure on facilities, psychiatrists and neurosurgeons who were involved in this barbaric “treatment” and cutting off federal funding for some of their projects. I’m also the only psychiatrist to testify in a successful psychosurgery malpractice trial. My reform efforts against ECT and lobotomy are described Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry (2008, p. 230-232), ECT is especially harmful to the more fragile brains of the elderly.

ECT causes closed head injury by means of electrically-induced seizures. There can be no doubt that the treatment causes trauma to the brain. The patient is comatose for several minutes in the recovery room and after a few treatments becomes confused and disoriented. A recent study confirms long-term memory loss and other cognitive deficits, which by definition is dementia. As I review in Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry (2008, pp. 237-241), large animal studies have shown brain cell death using ECT dosages less than those routinely inflicted today. My website has a very extensive ECT bibliography that can be downloaded for free. It includes a variety of the original large animal ECT research projects.

After John Read and Richard Bentall published their recent scientific review, Professor Bentall declared, “The very short- term benefit gained by a small minority cannot justify the risks to which all ECT recipients are exposed. The use of ECT therefore represents a failure to introduce the ideals of evidence-based medicine into psychiatry. It seems there is resistance to the research data in the ECT community, and perhaps in psychiatry in general.”

In a sane society, ECT would be abandoned as a treatment. In an insane society, a government agency would approve it without requiring testing for safety and efficacy. That may be about to happen.

Peter R. Breggin, MD is a psychiatrist in private practice in Ithaca, New York, and the author of dozens of scientific articles and more than twenty books. His first medical book was about ECT: Electroshock: Its Brain-Disabling Effects (Springer Publishing Company, New York, 1979). His most recent medical book dealing with ECT is Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex, Second Edition (2008). Dr. Breggin’s professional website is www.breggin.com.

You can meet and hear presentations by Dr. Breggin and some of his closest colleagues at the annual Empathic Therapy Conference to be held April 8-10, 2011 in Syracuse, New York. Click here to learn more about the conference and to register. Professionals and non-professionals alike are welcome.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/not-the-only-psychiatrist_b_813863.html

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Electroconvulsive Therapy: Will The FDA Whitewash It?

admin — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 21:52:08 +0000

The Huffington Post—December 28 , 2010

by Dr. Peter Breggin

For decades the FDA has allowed electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to be used without requiring any proof of safety or efficacy. The machines and the treatment has been “grandfathered” into use rather than tested. A few years ago the FDA proposed to test the treatment but heavy pressure from the American Psychiatric Association caused the agency to reverse itself. ECT remains untested and widely used. Imagine that — the American Psychiatric Association doesn’t want an obviously dangerous treatment to be tested at all. It just wants psychiatrists left alone to inflict it upon hapless patients.

Now the FDA is reconsidering whether to officially approve ECT without testing and it seems inclined to do so. Given the strength and influence of the American Psychiatric Association, we can anticipate results that will whitewash the dangers and allow the continued use of ECT unhampered by scientific testing. The hearings are scheduled for January 27 and 28, 2011. Anyone can attend and I encourage all interested citizens to get involved by contacting the FDA and asking for time to make a brief presentation.

I have written to the FDA explaining that the treatment has so little efficacy and is so obviously damaging — it routinely produces an acute state of delirium and confusion with severe memory loss — that it should be banned. That document has now been published in two scientific journals. It supplements my chapter on ECT in Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatric: Drugs, ECT and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex, Second Edition (2008).

As I noted in my scientific article and my 2008 book, and in a previous blog, Sackeim and colleagues from the heart of the psychiatric establishment once again confirmed that ECT routinely produces long-term dementia in the form of multiple memory loss in combination with other persistent cognitive deficits. Now a new scientific analysis has confirmed all the bad news about ECT.

The recent review of the scientific literature by John Read (New Zealand) and Richard Bentall (Great Britain) found that ECT treatments show only the most minimal evidence for improvement during the treatment and no evidence for improvement afterward. As my own research confirms, they found no evidence that ECT reduces the suicide rate.

Read and Bentall summarized “strong evidence” for “persistent and, for some, permanent brain dysfunction.” They concluded that “the cost-benefit analysis for ECT is so poor that its use cannot be scientifically justified.” They further stated, “The continued use of ECT therefore represents a failure to introduce the ideals of evidence-based medicine into psychiatry.”

The sad truth is that psychiatry has always promoted brain-damaging treatments, including lobotomy, electroshock and toxic chemical substances. In the 1970s I conducted an intensive international campaign to stop the resurgence of lobotomy and others forms of psychosurgery, and if my campaign had not been successful, lobotomy would have once again become widely accepted within contemporary psychiatry. Using media citations and other sources, that campaign and its success is documented in The Conscience of Psychiatry: The Reform Work of Peter R. Breggin, MD.

Because ECT advocates have successfully lobbied against the states collecting data on ECT use, we can only speculate about the numbers of patients subjected to this treatment. Probably it is at least in the range of 150,000 to 200,000 per year. Most large cities have several facilities doing ECT including private psychiatric hospitals and university hospitals and general hospitals with psychiatric wards.

Elderly women on Medicare are the most frequent victims of this anachronistic abuse, but anyone who gets depressed and overwhelmed with feelings of helplessness can become vulnerable. It’s not your mental condition as much as your doctor’s moral condition that determines whether you get pushed into taking ECT. Recently I’ve encountered three relatively young physicians whose professional lives were ruined by ECT-induced mental dysfunction.

It’s time for public outrage and it’s time for the FDA to close the door on this abusive “treatment.”

Peter R. Breggin, M.D. is a psychiatrist in private practice in Ithaca, New York, and the author of dozens of scientific articles and more than twenty books. His two most recent books are Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Crime and Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, Second Edition: Drugs, Electroshock and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex. Dr. Breggin and his wife Ginger have founded a new organization, The Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education and Living (empathictherapy.org). It will hold an international conference in Syracuse, New York, April 8-10, 2011. It’s time to sign up!

The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour appears weekly on the Progressive Radio Network where it is archived for convenient listening. Dr. Breggin’s professional website is www.breggin.com.

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5 Myths About Depression Treatments

admin — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 20:58:18 +0000

COUNTER PUNCH, December 3, 2010

By Bruce E. Levine,
Clinical Psychologist

A warning: for people satisfied with their standard depression treatments, debunking myths about them may be troubling. However, for critically thinking depression sufferers who have not been helped by antidepressants, psychotherapy, or other standard treatments, discovering truths about these treatments can provide ideas about what may actually work for them.

Critical thinkers have difficulty placing faith in any depression treatment because science tells them that these treatments often work no better than placebos or nothing at all, and if one lacks faith in a depression treatment, it is not likely to be effective. In fact, it is belief and faith—or what scientists call “expectations” and the “placebo effect”—that is mostly responsible for any depression treatment working. Critical-thinkers can find a way out of depression when their critical thinking about depression treatments is validated and respected, and they are challenged to think more critically about their critical thinking.

Myth 1: Antidepressants Are More Effective than Placebos

Many depressed people report that antidepressants have been effective for them, but do antidepressants work any better than a sugar pill? Researcher Irving Kirsch (professor of psychology at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom as well as professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and author of The Emperor’s New Drugs) has been trying to answer that question for a significant part of his career.

In 2002, Kirsch and his team at the University of Connecticut examined 47 depression treatment studies that had been sponsored by drug companies on the antidepressants Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Celexa, and Serzone. Many of these studies had not been published, but all had been submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), so Kirsch used the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to all the data. He discovered that in the majority of the trials, antidepressants failed to outperform sugar pill placebos.

“All antidepressants,” Kirsch reported in 2010, “including the well-known SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors], had no clinically significant benefit over a placebo.” While in aggregate, antidepressants slightly edge out placebos, the difference is so unremarkable that Kirsch and others describe it as “clinically negligible.”

Why are so many doctors unaware of the lack of superiority of antidepressants as compared to placebos? The answer became clear in 2008 when researcher and physician Erick Turner (currently at the Department of Psychiatry and Center for Ethics in Health Care, Oregon Health and Science University) discovered that antidepressant studies with favorable outcomes were far more likely to be published than those with unfavorable outcomes. Analyzing published and unpublished antidepressant studies registered with the FDA between 1987-2004, Turner found that 37 of 38 studies having positive results were published; however, Turner reported, “Studies viewed by the FDA as having negative or questionable results were, with 3 exceptions, either not published (22 studies) or published in a way that, in our opinion, [falsely] conveyed a positive outcome (11 studies).”

Myth 2: If the First Antidepressant Fails, Another Antidepressant Will Likely Succeed

In The Noonday Demon, the popular 2001 book about depression, writer and depression sufferer Andrew Solomon repeated the then urban legend that “more than 80 percent of depressed patients are responsive to medication.” Solomon accurately cites a journal article that states this statistic; however, following the “reference trail,” I discovered that the journal article that Solomon cited refers to a second article for evidence of this statistic, but this second journal article mentions nothing about 80 percent of depressed patients responding to some medication.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) was aware that there was no research to back up the assertion that 80 percent of depressed patients improve if they keep trying different medications, so NIMH funded “Sequential Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression” (STAR*D), the largest ever study of sequential depression treatments. STAR*D results were published in 2006.

In Step One of STAR*D, all depressed patients were given the antidepressant Celexa, and in Step Two, patients who failed to respond to Celexa were divided into different groups and received other treatments (mostly different drug treatments) in place of or in addition to Celexa. If their second treatment failed, there was a third and, if necessary, a fourth treatment step.

In every STAR*D treatment step, remission rates were either equal to or significantly lower than the customary placebo performance in other antidepressant studies, but to the exasperation of many scientists, there was no placebo control in this $35 million U.S. taxpayer funded STAR*D study. (STAR*D researchers disclosed receiving consulting and speaker fees from the pharmaceutical companies which manufacture the antidepressants studied in STAR*D.)

In March 2006, NIMH triumphantly announced that 50 percent of depressed people saw remission of symptoms after the first two STAR*D steps. However, NIMH failed to mention in its press release that in the same time it took to complete these first two steps—slightly over 6 months—previous research shows that depressed people receiving no treatment at all have a spontaneous remission rate of 50 percent.

In November 2006, following the completion of all four STAR*D steps, STAR*D authors claimed a 67 percent cumulative remission rate, which again exasperated many scientists because this number failed to incorporate STAR*D’s extremely high relapse and dropout rates. In an American Journal of Psychiatry editorial that accompanied STAR*D authors’ report, J. Craig Nelson, M.D, stated, “I found a cumulative sustained recovery rate of 43 percent after four treatments, using a method similar to the authors but taking relapse rates into account.” However, even 43 percent turns out to be an inflated rate.

Separate analyses of STAR*D in 2010 by psychologist Ed Pigott and medical reporter Robert Whitaker revealed that STAR*D researchers had inflated remission numbers by switching mid-study to a more lenient measurement, and also by including patients who were not depressed enough at baseline to meet study criteria. But even taking the STAR*D data as is, Pigott’s analysis revealed that less than 3 percent of the entire group of depressed patients who began the STAR*D study can be ascertained as having a sustained remission (i.e., actually participated in the final assessment without relapsing and/or dropping out).

Myth 3: Electroconvulsive Treatment (ECT) is an Effective Last Resort

Andrew Solomon in The Noonday Demon alsostates, “ECT seems to have some significant impact between 75 and 90 percent of the time. About half of those who have improved on ECT still feel good a year after treatment.” Is ECT really that effective?

In 2004, researcher Joan Prudic, M.D. and her team at New York State Psychiatric Institute conducted a major study of ECT, which involved 347 patients at seven hospitals. Reported were both the immediate outcomes and the outcomes over a 24-week follow-up period. With respect to immediate outcomes, Prudic reported: “In contrast to the 70 to 90 percent remission rates expected with ECT, remission rates, depending on criteria, were 30.3 to 46.7 percent.” Even worse for ECT advocates, Prudic noted that, “10 days after ECT, patients had lost 40 percent of the improvement.”

There are also studies comparing ECT with a placebo (called “sham ECT”). In sham ECT, patients receive muscle-relaxing and anesthetizing drugs that routinely accompany ECT, and they are hooked up to the ECT apparatus, but they receive no electric voltage. Psychiatrist Colin Ross reports, “No study has demonstrated a significant difference between real and placebo (sham) ECT at 1 month post-treatment.”

Myth 4: Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is the Best Psychotherapy for Depression

First, the good news about CBT. The only non-drug treatment examined in STAR*D was a form of cognitive therapy (which was not fully detailed by STAR*D authors and only administered in Step Two). Among those who failed Celexa in the first step, three groups in Step Two switched from Celexa to one of three antidepressants, and their remission rates ranged from 25 to 26.6 percent; but one group in Step Two switched from Celexa to cognitive therapy, and its remission rate was 41.9 percent. STAR*D researchers did not assess whether any differences in treatment effectiveness were statistically significant.

Another group in Step Two maintained Celexa and added cognitive therapy, and this “Celexa plus cognitive therapy” group’s remission rate was 29.4 percent, not as high as the group that received cognitive therapy without medication. This begs the question: Is it also a myth that “antidepressants plus psychotherapy” works better than either treatment alone? Research psychologist David Antonuccio at the University of Nevada School of Medicine reports, “Combined psychotherapy and drug treatment do not appear to be superior to therapy or drug treatment alone.”

What psychotherapy is best for depression? While Americans hear most about CBT, it turns out that CBT or some form of cognitive therapy is no more effective for depression than any of several other types of psychotherapy. In 2008, psychologists Pim Cuijpers and Annemicke van Straten at the University of Amsterdam reported on a meta-analysis of 53 studies, each of which compared two or more different types of psychotherapy for depression. Included were varieties of “cognitive-behavior therapy,” “psychodynamic therapy,” “behavioral activation therapy,” “social skills training,” “problem-solving therapy,” “interpersonal therapy,” and “nondirective supportive therapy.” The major finding? “No large differences in efficacy between major psychotherapies for mild to moderate depression.”

So, if psychotherapy technique is not all that important, what is? Psychologist Bruce Wampold at the University of Wisconsin reviewed the psychotherapy outcome literature, examining hundreds of studies and meta-analyses, for his book The Great Psychotherapy Debate. Wampold unequivocally states that outcome effectiveness does not depend on the specific techniques of psychotherapy but instead depends on so-called “non-specific” factors such as the nature of the alliance between therapist and their client, and clients’ confidence in the therapy and in their therapist. “Simply stated,” Wampold concludes, “the client must believe in the treatment or be led to believe in it.”

Myth 5: No Treatment for Depression Works

In April 2002, an NIMH-funded study on the antidepressant Zolof, the herb St. John’s wort, and a placebo had some curious results. The findings were that 32 percent of placebo-treated patients experienced remission, better than the 25 percent remission for the Zoloft-treated patients or the 24 percent remission for the St. John’s wort-treated patients. Most scientists would say that this study shows that neither Zoloft nor St. John’s wort worked, but those subjects who had positive outcomes with these two treatments would disagree. So, does this study show that antidepressants and St. John’s wort are not helpful, or does it show that “expectations,” belief,” and “faith” are the likely factors that make all treatments work?

When assessing whether a specific treatment is effective, scientists are trained to rule out the effect of expectations. Researchers evaluate a depression treatment as effective if, in a controlled study, the treatment outcome is significantly better than a placebo. However, the reality of depression treatments is that expectations, faith, belief, and the placebo effect are—far and away—the most important reasons why anything works.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.counterpunch.org/levine12032010.html

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The Hidden Tragedy of the CIA’s Experiments on Children

cchrint — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:58:50 +0000

Truthout
By H.P. Albarelli Jr. and Dr. Jeffrey S. Kaye
August 11, 2010

Bobby is seven years old, but this is not the first time he has been subjected to electroshock. It’s his third time. In all, over the next year, Bobby will experience eight electroshock sessions. Placed on the examining table, he is held down by two male attendants while the physician places a solution on his temples. Bobby struggles with the two men holding him down, but his efforts are useless. He cries out and tries to pull away. One of the attendants tries to force a thick wedge of rubber into his mouth. He turns his head sharply away and cries out, “Let me go, please. I don’t want to be here. Please, let me go.” Bobby’s physician looks irritated and she tells him, “Come on now, Bobby, try to act like a big boy and be still and relax.” Bobby turns his head away from the woman and opens his mouth for the wedge that will prevent him from biting through his tongue. He begins to cry silently, his small shoulders shaking and he stiffens his body against what he knows is coming.

To find out more about psychiatry/
government experiments, watch this
interview with Psychiatrist and Author,
Colin Ross

Mary is only five years old. She sits on a small, straight-backed chair, moving her legs back and forth, humming the same four notes over and over and over. Her head, framed in a tangled mass of golden curls, moves up and down with each note. For the first three years of her life, Mary was thought to be a mostly normal child. Then, after she began behaving oddly, she had been handed off to a foster family. Her father and mother didn’t want her any longer. She had become too strange for her father, whose alcoholism clouded any awareness of his young daughter. Mary’s mother had never wanted her anyway and was happy to have her placed in another home. When the LSD Mary has been given begins to have its effects, she stops moving her head and legs and sits staring at the wall. She doesn’t move at all. After about ten minutes, she looks at the nearby physician observing her, and says, “God isn’t coming back today. He’s too busy. He won’t be back here for weeks.”

From early 1940 to 1953, Dr. Lauretta Bender, a highly respected child neuropsychiatrist practicing at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, experimented extensively with electroshock therapy on children who had been diagnosed with “autistic schizophrenia.” In all, it has been reported that Bender administered electroconvulsive therapy to at least 100 children ranging in age from three years old to 12 years, with some reports indicating the total may be twice that number. One source reports that, inclusive of Bender’s work, electroconvulsive treatment was used on more than 500 children at Bellevue Hospital from 1942 to 1956, and then at Creedmoor State Hospital Children’s Service from 1956 to 1969. Bender was a confident and dogmatic woman, who bristled at criticism, oftentimes refused to acknowledge reality even when it stood starkly before her.

Despite publicly claiming good results with electroshock treatment, privately Bender said she was seriously disappointed in the aftereffects and results shown by the subject children. Indeed, the condition of some of the children appeared to have only worsened. One six-year-old boy, after being shocked several times, went from being a shy, withdrawn child to acting increasingly aggressive and violent. Another child, a seven-year-old girl, following five electroshock sessions had become nearly catatonic.

Years later, another of Bender’s young patients who became overly aggressive after about 20 treatments, now grown, was convicted in court as a “multiple murderer.” Others, in adulthood, reportedly were in and of trouble and prison for a battery of petty and violent crimes. A 1954 scientific study of about 50 of Bender’s young electroshock patients, conducted by two psychologists, found that nearly all were worse off after the “therapy” and that some had become suicidal after treatment. One of the children studied in 1954 was the son of well-known writer Jacqueline Susann, author of the bestselling novel “Valley of the Dolls.” Susann’s son, Guy, was diagnosed with autism shortly after birth and, when he was three years old, Dr. Bender convinced Susann and her husband that Guy could be successfully treated with electroshock therapy. Guy returned home from Bender’s care a nearly lifeless child. Susann later told people that Bender had “destroyed” her son. Guy has been confined to institutions since his treatment.

To their credit, some of Dr. Bender’s colleagues considered her use of electroshock on children “scandalous,” but few colleagues spoke out against her, a situation still today common among those in the medical profession. Said Dr. Leon Eisenberg, a widely respected physician and true pioneer in the study of autistic children, “[Lauretta Bender] claimed that some of these children recovered [because of her use of shock treatment]. I once wrote a paper in which I referred to several studies by [Dr. E. R.] Clardy. He was at Rockwin State Hospital – the back up to Bellevue – and he described the arrival of these children. He considered them psychotic and perhaps worse off then before the treatment.” (This writer could find no case where any of Bender’s colleagues spoke out against her decidedly racist viewpoints. Bender made it quite clear that she felt that African-Americans were best characterized by their “capacity for laziness” and “ability to dance,” both features, Bender claimed, of the “specific brain impulses” of African-Americans.)

About the same time Dr. Bender was conducting her electroshock experiments, she was also widely experimenting on autistic and schizophrenic children with what she termed other “treatment endeavors.” These included use of a wide array of psycho-pharmaceutical agents, several provided to her by the Sandoz Chemical Co. in Basel, Switzerland, as well as Metrazol, sub-shock insulin therapy, amphetamines and anticonvulsants. Metrazol was a trade name for pentylenetetrazol, a drug used as a circulatory and respiratory stimulant. High doses cause convulsions, as discovered in 1934 by the Hungarian-American neurologist and psychiatrist Ladislas J. Meduna.

Read entire article here: http://www.truth-out.org/the-hidden-tragedy-cias-experiments-children62208

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Ireland: Psychiatry has “too much power” to electroshock patients against their will causing memory loss/brain damage

cchrint — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:41:13 +0000

Irish Times
By Carl O’Brien
March 16, 2010

A CONSULTANT psychiatrist employed by the HSE has warned that psychiatrists have “too much power” and that rules on the use of electro-shock therapy need to be changed to protect patients.

Dr Pat Bracken, clinical director for the West Cork mental health service, was speaking at a private briefing for members of the Oireachtas on whether changes are needed to laws governing use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). These rules state that ECT can be used where a patient is “unable or unwilling” to give consent once it has been approved by two consultant psychiatrists.

Dr Bracken said this law meant there was no legal comeback for a patient who felt they had been harmed.

“In any other branch of medicine it would be unconscionable to allow a procedure to go ahead, except in the most dire emergency, without procuring consent, if not from the patient then from a next-of-kin,” he said.

He said ECT was the “most invasive procedure” currently used by psychiatrists and that research showed that at least a third of recipients had suffered substantial memory loss after treatment.

Read entire article: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2010/0316/1224266346885.html

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