CCHR International » shock treatment

In Ireland: No Consent for 12% of those getting electroshocked

admin — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 19:01:08 +0000

Note from CCHR: Electroshock is the “treatment” psychiatrists employ when their first line of “treatment”— drugs—fail to work. And the drugs inevitably fail to work, simply because they are no more effective than placebo, yet have side effects rivaling the most hardcore street drugs. In the U.S. alone, more than 100,000 people are electroshocked every year, and the majority of them are elderly. But psychiatrists also electroshock two of the other most vulnerable subjects; pregnant women and children. Hard to believe, but true. And what’s more, psychiatrists are pushing harder than ever for increases in electroshock treatment, recently lobbying the U.S. FDA to downgrade electroshock machines from the most high risk category of device (Class III) to Class II. They failed. And the reason they failed is because the facts were made known by CCHR and other experts who testified before the FDA. You can read about this FDA hearing here: http://www.cchrint.org/2011/01/31/fda-advisory-panel-recommends-electroshock-device-too-risky-for-reclassification/

The article below talks about the administration of electroshock without the consent of the patient. But even in cases where the patient does give consent, do we really believe they or their family members are getting enough information to make an informed choice? Are they told psychiatrists still have no idea how electroshock “works?” That if they imagine sticking their finger in a light socket, then multiply that current by about 3-4 times, they will have an idea of the amount of electricity that will be sent searing through the brain? Are they told they could lose their memories, often permanently? Not remember their own wedding or where they were born, or their own children? That side effects also include death? Or how about the fact that electroshock treatment was born in Italy, 1938, when psychiatrist Ugo Cerletti saw pigs being made more docile before slaughter so decided to give it a shot on humans? Are those facts in the consent form?

To get the facts about Electroshock, watch this video:
Electroshock: It’s Not Treatment, It’s Torture
http://www.youtube.com/cchrint#p/c/5/QDR3cD8_kck

The Irish Independent, March 16, 2011

By Eilish O’Regan

Almost one in eight patients who were given electric shock treatment over the course of a year were either unable or unwilling to give consent to the controversial procedure.

A higher number of women (62.5pc) than men were given the electroconsvulsive treatment (ECT) without consent, the 2009 monitoring report from the Mental Health Commission watchdog revealed.

The majority of the 373 treatments were given to patients who gave their agreement — but the law does allow for it to be given in cases where a person is “unwilling or unable to do so”.

However, where ECT is given without the permission of the patient, the treating doctor has to ensure he or she gets a second opinion from another psychiatrist who must agree it is the best course. They do not need to get the consent of family members.

The report, which looked at 66 mental health centres, found that there were 34 fewer programmes of ECT administered in 2009 compared to 2008.

St Patrick’s Hospital in Dublin, the largest of the centres, had the highest number of ECT treatments (126) and accounted for one third of all cases.

St Brigid’s Hospital in Ballinasloe had the second highest number followed by the Department of Psychiatry in Waterford Regional Hospital.

The patients were mostly suffering from depression while others had schizophrenia and mania.

The main reason for resorting to electric shock treatment was the patient’s lack of response to medication.

Other reasons included risk of suicide and physical deterioration and where a “rapid response” was deemed necessary in a significant number of the patients.

An improvement was seen in the vast majority of patients but no improvement was seen in 5.4pc of those treated. It was stopped in a small number of cases due to complications.

Irish psychiatrists have differing views on the merits of the treatment with some saying it should be stopped because of complications such as risk of memory loss.

Seizure

If ECT is recommended, the patient is given a general anaesthetic and medication to relax their muscles. Electrodes are then placed on the person’s head and a pulse of electricity passed through the brain which will set off a fit or seizure.

The patient normally has around six to 12 sessions with two administered a week. Electricity changes the chemical composition of the patient’s brain and lifts them out of their low mood.

‘Coronation Street’ actress Beverly Callard credits ECT with rescuing her from severe depression after she was unresponsive to medication.

The College of Psychiatry in Ireland has proposed changes in selecting a doctor asked for a second opinion. The doctor should be part of a panel set up by the Mental Health Commission and would also have to consult with others treating the patient.

http://www.independent.ie/health/latest-news/no-consent-for-12pc-of-electric-shock-care-2581131.html

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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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UN Calls Electroshock Treatment of Kids at Massachusetts School “Torture”

cchrint — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 22:52:26 +0000

ABC News Nightline
By Katie Hinman and Kimberly Brown
June 30, 2010

It may look like any leafy New England campus, but inside one Massachusetts school for special needs children, the method of teaching at work is anything but ordinary.

The Boston-area’s Judge Rotenberg Center educates and treats enrollees ages 3 to adult, all of whom are struggling with severe emotional, behavior, and psychiatric problems, including autism-like disorders. And for about half of the 250 students here, undesirable behavior means getting hooked up to a special machine and administered an electric shock.

The skin shock treatment, used only after both a court and the student’s parents have approved, has drawn criticism for years. But after the release of a recent study by Mental Disability Rights International, Rotenberg has come under the scrutiny of no less than the United Nations, which is calling the school’s practices “torture.”

“To be frank, I was shocked when I was reading the report,” said Manfred Nowak, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture. “What I did, on the 11th of May, was to send an urgent appeal to the U.S. government asking them to investigate.”

Read entire article: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/shock-therapy-massachussetts-school/story?id=11047334

RELATED ARTICLE: Sue Clark-Wittenberg, director of the Wittenberg Center to End Electroshock in Ottawa, Canada is an electroshock survivor who is appealing to Amnesty International to deem electroshock (ECT) as torture.
http://babies.secretbest.com/19814/electroshock-is-torture/

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Electroshock Survivor & Human Rights Activist Calls on Amnesty International to Deem Electroshock (ECT) as Torture

cchrint — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:45:36 +0000

Baby Care
June 14, 2010

Sue Clark-Wittenberg, director of the Wittenberg Center to End Electroshock in Ottawa, Canada is an electroshock survivor who is appealing to Amnesty International to deem electroshock (ECT) as torture. Sue is a torture victim of electroshock.

Dr. Peter R. Breggin, a psychiatrist from NY State wrote an article recently re ECT called “Disturbing News for Patients and Shock Doctors Alike” which proves ECT always causes brain damage 100% of the time. See the article in full at this URL: www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/

In America, electroshock is not deemed as torture by Amnesty International. ECT is being given more and more especially to women with post partum depression and to women over 60 years of age. Many people all over the world are working to ban electroshock universally. Yearly stats for ECT given:

Ontario, Canada – 14000 ECTs given
USA – 100000 Americans get ECT
UK – 50000 ECT given
Worldwide – 1 to 2 million people get ECT

Read entire article: http://babies.secretbest.com/19814/electroshock-is-torture/

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Think They Don’t Electroshock People Anymore? Think Again–Even toddlers and pregnant women are being shocked

admin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:27:59 +0000

By Dr. John Breeding, author of The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses

Ask the average person about the use of electroshock treatment in today’s society and 9 out of 10 will respond, “They still shock people?”

They do. It’s estimated that more than 100,000 Americans are electroshocked each year; half are 60 and older, and two-thirds are women. In Australia, it was recently revealed that psychiatrists had electroshocked 55 toddlers age four and younger. In the UK, three year olds have been brutalized with it. And one of the country’s leading mental health “patients’ rights” groups—the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI)—recently endorsed the use of electroshock on pregnant women. One would wonder why a patients’ rights group would endorse such an obviously harmful procedure if not for the fact that the group has recently been exposed as a major front for the psycho/pharmaceutical industry.

The FDA reports pregnant women miscarrying following ECT, while studies show that in addition to the risk of death, the fetus can suffer malnutrition, dehydration and violent injury. Electroshocking children, pregnant women and the unborn is tantamount to torture and should not only be banned but those administering it prosecuted.

Given the factual truths of sending up to 360 volts of electricity searing through the brain – the obvious question is why the “treatment” has not gone by the wayside like its psychiatric sister treatments during the 1940s and 1950s, insulin coma shock and lobotomy.

Electroshock was indeed challenged, and its low point pretty much coincided with the release in 1975 of the Academy Award-winning film version of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the feisty Randle Patrick McMurphy. The horrible scene of his undergoing “unmodified” shock treatment, i.e., without anesthetic and muscle-paralyzing drugs, along with his reduction to a vegetative state was seared in the public’s mind. This, together with public exposure of the shameful state of psychiatric institutions, certainly gave electroshock treatment a bad name—so much so that the treatment was renamed Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT). The bad publicity caused its use in public institutions to fall sharply, and its overall use was also considerably diminished. It would be naïve, however, to think that this curtailment was strictly due to increased public awareness about the brutalities of the procedure. The advent of neuroleptics (nerve-seizing drugs) was perhaps the major factor in this development. The indiscriminate use of these drugs replaced the indiscriminate use of ECT as the primary means of subduing and pacifying inmates who resisted incarceration and wouldn’t cooperate.

In the last two decades, however, electroshock has made a comeback.

Most electroshock is insurance-covered. ECT specialists on average have incomes twice that of other psychiatrists. The cost for inpatient ECT ranges from $50,000 to $75,000 per series (usually 8 to 12 individual sessions). Electroshock is a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry—yet its damaging effects are well known to those who endorse it.

Max Fink, a professor of psychiatry and the “Grandfather of American ECT” believed the “therapeutic” effect from ECT is produced by brain dysfunction and damage. “Effects on memory, common in ECT, come in two flavors,” wrote Fink in Psychiatric Times in 2006. “Delirium is common with each seizure and is well documented by immediate measurable changes in brain chemistry and physiology” and “the second complaint is of a persistent loss of personal memories…They do not recall the names of their children, family holidays, or personal events….Their complaints cast a public shadow on ECT practice.”

The Procedure

Electroshock is a psychiatric procedure that involves the production of a grand mal convulsion, similar to an epileptic seizure, by passing from 70 to upwards of 600 volts of electric current through the brain for one-half second to four seconds. Before application, ECT subjects are typically given anesthetic, tranquilizing and muscle-paralyzing drugs to reduce fear, pain, and the risk (from violent muscle spasms) of fractured bones (particularly of the spine, a common occurrence in the early history of ECT before the introduction, in the mid-1950s, of the muscle-paralyzing drug succinylcholine [Anectine]). The ECT-induced convulsion usually lasts from thirty to sixty seconds and may immediately produce disorienting, painful, and even life-threatening complications, such as apnea (temporary suspension of breathing) and cardiac arrest. The convulsion is followed by a period of unconsciousness of several minutes’ duration. Electroshock is usually administered in hospitals because they are equipped to handle emergency situations that often develop during or soon after an ECT session.

Brain Damage

The brain naturally operates in millivolts of electricity, and ECT administers on average between 150 and 400 volts of electricity to the brain, a force sufficient to induce a grand mal seizure, rupture the protective blood-brain barrier and incite glutamate toxicity (glutamate is a powerful neurotransmitter released by nerve cells in the brain and is responsible for sending signals between nerve cells. In glutamate toxicity there is too much glutamate that leads to over-excitation of the receiving nerve cell, which can cause cell damage and/or death). It is prima-facie, common sense obvious fact that ECT causes brain damage. After all, the rest of medicine, as well as the building trades, do their best to prevent people from being hurt or killed by electrical shock. People with epilepsy are given anticonvulsant drugs to prevent seizures because they are known to damage the brain. The Electroshock Quotationary, a collection of quotations, excerpts, and essays about the history and nature of electroshock, by shock survivor Leonard Roy Frank, includes the testimony of Peter Sterling, a University of Pennsylvania neuroscience professor, describing the nature of ECT-caused brain damage, dated May 31, 2001, to the New York Assembly Standing Committee on Mental Health at a public hearing on ECT.

Sterling affirms the obvious: that massive amounts of electricity directly into the brain cause profound damage.

Lack of Efficacy

Not only does electroshock directly violate the Hippocratic oath to do no harm, the practice has never been proven effective. There are no lasting beneficial effects of electroshock; sham-electroshock (anesthesia but no electroshock) has the same short-term outcomes as electroshock (Ross, 2006). Even leading shock researcher and advocate Harold Sackeim now provides a proof. In an article from 2001, he and his colleagues conclude, “Our study indicates that without active treatment, virtually all remitted patients relapse within 6 months of stopping ECT.” (Italics mine)

The FDA

The battle against electroshock has been ongoing since its advent. The two recent chronicles by electroshock survivor activist leaders, Leonard Roy Frank (The Electroshock Quotationary) and Linda Andre (Doctors of Deception), tell the story best. Just now, the fight has centered on the FDA review of the “efficacy and safety” of ECT machines.

Many activists, including myself, have submitted testimony urging the FDA NOT to reclassify these devices from Class III (high risk) to Class II (low risk). I have worked with scores of electroshock survivors, and I can tell you the damage is consistent and terrible. I can also tell you as a psychologist that there are methods so much gentler, safer and more effective to help people with depression.

A Repackaged Product

The reason for electroshock’s endurance and resurgence is best described by Linda Andre, shock survivor and leader of the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry, in her masterful new work, Doctors of Deception: What They Don’t Want You to Know About Shock Treatment—it is simply the triumph of public relations over science. A concerted PR campaign has allowed electroshock to continue despite clear scientific evidence of its dismal and tragic record on safety and efficacy.

The industry repackaged the product to keep it selling. They touted a “newer and safer ECT,” bragging about improved equipment and the introduction of anesthesia and muscle paralysants, which actually came on the market in the 1950s. While the muscle paralysants greatly reduced the risk of broken bones from unrestrained convulsions, there was no lessening of permanent damage to the brain caused by the electroshocks. The drugs made the procedure appear much more benign because they suppressed the body’s natural, violent reaction to a grand mal convulsion. However, as Doug Cameron (1994) and other researchers have shown, the new machines, because they are more powerful than ever are capable of releasing greater amounts of electricity into the brain thus causing more damage than the older devices.

With the newer technique modifications there is also an added risk. The drugs used to prevent bone complications raise the seizure threshold so that more electrical current is required to induce the convulsion, which in turn increases brain damage. Moreover, whereas ECT specialists formerly tried to induce seizures with minimal current, they commonly use suprathreshold amounts in the belief that they are more effective. Again, the more current, the more brain damage. Proponents, and the public, have missed the point that the supposed “effectiveness” of ECT is in direct ratio to the amount of brain damage it causes.

In addition to the propaganda effect and the financial incentives, there is a less well-considered reason for ECT’s popularity among psychiatrists. Although electroshock is often described as psychiatry’s “treatment of last resort,” it is actually psychiatry’s “treatment of next resort.” Next resort after psychiatric drugs, which are the main “treatment”—a treatment whose lack of effectiveness and lack of safety are well documented. Like ECT, these drugs can damage and disable the brain. Like ECT, they can cause a fully justified resentment that goes with the experience of having been betrayed by one’s supposed helpers.

Activist and electroshock survivor Leonard Roy Frank’s recent letter to the FDA in regards to their review of ECT devices is one of the best. I end this blog article with his conclusion:

As a destroyer of memories and thoughts, electroshock is a direct, violent assault on these hallmarks of American liberty: freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from assault, and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. Tens of thousands of people every year in the United States are deceived or coerced into undergoing electroshock. The FDA should do everything in its power to discourage the use of electroshock by:

keeping ECT’s Class III, high-risk rating;

insisting that electroshock psychiatrists, manufacturers of ECT devices, and executives and administrators in hospitals where ECT is administered, substantiate with scientific proof their claims that the procedure is “safe and effective”;

and calling upon the Congress and the Department of Justice to investigate the fraudulent and coercive use of this cruel and inhuman procedure.

Despite the evidence of grievous harm and failure to help, electroshock’s proponents rave on; as an example, an electroshock psychiatrist told Washington Post reporter Sandra Boodman in 1996, that, “ECT is one of God’s gifts to mankind. There is nothing like it, nothing equal to it in efficacy or safety in all of psychiatry.”

Given that ECT causes brain damage, memory loss, and other serious cognitive impairment, electroshock serves to cover up and impede any potential malpractice or personal injury litigation. It generally takes years for a shock survivor to recover enough to figure out what has happened to them, and most states have a statute of limitations (usually one or two years) on medical malpractice and personal injury suits. As a result, electroshock survivors are effectively prevented from pursuing litigation against those who harmed them, making electroshock psychiatrists almost malpractice-proof.

John Breeding, Ph.D. has been a counseling psychologist in Austin, Texas for 25 years.
He is an outspoken critic of electroshock treatment and has testified against its use before legislative bodies on numerous occasions. Dr. Breeding is also the director of Texans For Safe Education, a citizens group dedicated to challenging the ever-increasing role of psychiatric drugs in schools. He is the author of numerous articles and four books including: The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses and True Nature and Great Misunderstandings.

For more information on the damage caused by ECT, visit www.endofshock.com

References

Ayd Jr., F.T. (November-December 1963). “Guest editorial: Ugo Cerletti, M.D. (1877-1963),” Psychosomatics, Vol. 4, pp. A-6 – A-7.

Boodman, S.G. (September 24, 1996). “Shock therapy: It’s back,” Washington Post (Health Section), pp. 14-20.

Frank, Leonard Roy, The Electroshock Quotationary, June 2006, www.endofshock.com/102C_ECT.PDF.

Andre, Linda, Doctors of Deception, www.doctorsofdeception.com.

Kalinowsky, L.B. (1988). Quoted in R. Abrams, “Interview with Lothar Kalinowsky, M.D.,” Convulsive Therapy, Vol. 4.

Ross, C.A. (Spring 2006). “The sham ECT literature: Implications for consent to ECT,” Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 8.

Sackeim, H.A. et al. (March 14, 2001). “Continuation pharmacotherapy in the prevention of relapse following electroconvulsive therapy,” Journal of the American Medical Association.

Sackeim, H.A. (2001). “Memory loss: From polarization to reconciliation,” Journal of ECT, vol. 17, no. 3, p. 229. Sackeim, H.A., Prudic, J. et al. (January 2007). “The cognitive effects of electroconvulsive therapy in community settings,” Neuropsychopharmacology, Vol. 32, pp. 244-254.

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

cchrint — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:49:47 +0000

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

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

cchrint — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:36:42 +0000

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/

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CCHR International » shock treatment

In Ireland: No Consent for 12% of those getting electroshocked

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

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