ELECTRIC shock therapy on young children will be banned and psychiatrists could be jailed for carrying out the controversial treatment on teenagers and adults without strict legal checks, under proposed legislation. Under a review of Victoria’s Mental Health Act, new legislation has been drafted that would outlaw electroconvulsive therapy, also known as ECT, for children aged 12 and under.
MORE than 200 psychiatric patients died in ”unexpected, unnatural or violent” circumstances last year, a report by Victoria’s chief psychiatrist reveals. Six patients died by committing suicide in hospital but most of the 237 deaths occurred in the community…Dr Vine’s annual report for 2009-10 shows that 14 per cent of inpatients were secluded, or confined in a room locked from the outside, in what guidelines say should be used only when a patient poses an immediate risk to himself or others.
A total of 1828 patients were secluded and there were 6059 episodes of seclusion, up slightly from the previous year. More than 1100 were for longer than 12 hours. A total of 1750 patients received electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), including 83 children, the youngest of whom was 13.
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.
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.
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.