LOS ANGELES - January 16, 2018 - (Newswire.com)
A 2017 report in the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry has fueled a new call for a ban on the use of electroshock treatment, especially on children and the elderly. And with women historically being electroshocked two to three times that of men, the use of the procedure has been labeled as a form of violence against women.[1] Last year, Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR), a mental health industry watchdog, filed more than 8,000 complaints and letters exposing the dangers of electroshock, also known as ECT, with U.S. state health and finance legislative committee members in 45 states. CCHR provided facts from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other requests it obtained on ECT usage, including 14 states out of 22 responding, confirming that children aged 0-5 were being electroshocked. Nearly 10,000 people have signed CCHR’s online petition launched in 2017 supporting a ban on electroshock.[2] Sign the Petition to Ban Electroshock (ECT) Device Being Used on Children, the Elderly and Vulnerable Patients.
In a comprehensive review of research on ECT since 2009, psychologist John Read, professor of clinical psychology at the University of East London, and co-author Chelsea Arnold determined that there is “no evidence that ECT is more effective than placebo for depression reduction or suicide prevention.” They conclude, “Given the well-documented high risk of persistent memory dysfunction, the cost-benefit analysis for ECT remains so poor that its use cannot be scientifically, or ethically, justified.”[3]
They reviewed 91 ECT studies and pointed out, “There were no new placebo-controlled trials. There have now been no such studies since 1985. Only four placebo-controlled studies have ever produced data beyond the end of treatment, none of which have found any advantage for ECT over placebo. Of the 91 studies, only two aimed to evaluate the efficacy of ECT. Both were severely flawed. None of the other 89 produced robust evidence that ECT is effective for depression, primarily because at least 60 percent maintained ECT participants on medication and 89 percent produced no meaningful follow-up data beyond the end of treatment.”[4]
As a Huffington Post commentary on the study reported, “While psychiatry quotes studies stating a high percentage of patients improved with ECT, lacking a placebo-control, these studies are scientifically meaningless. A significant number of patients with depression will report improving with any kind of treatment.”[5]
The Violence of Electroshocking Women
Bonnie Burstow from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Canada, writing in the journal Violence Against Women said that the use of electroshock in women is a form of violence. A Freedom of Information Act request for 1999-2000 statistics of ECT use in Ontario determined “71 percent of the patients given ECT in provincial psychiatric institutions were women, and 75 percent of the total electroshock administered was administered to women. Another statistic that seems relevant is that approximately 95 percent of all shock doctors are male,” she wrote.[6]
In 2015, Burstow also wrote of a study that established that women’s memory is more impacted than men’s as a result of electroshock — a reality possibly related to women’s lower seizure threshold — and begs the question: “What happens between a mother and child when the mother cannot recall a good part of the early years of her own child’s life? When she is impaired in her ability to figure out how to be a mother?”[7]
Prof. Read said the fact that ECT is more commonly used among women and older individuals was of concern. “Nobody talks about it, or tries to explain it, or wonders why that might be,” he said. “[ECT] is part of over-medicalizing of human distress,” said Read, adding that some studies have shown that the side effects of ECT, primarily related to memory loss, are worse for women and older people.[8]
Electroshock Causes Elderly Abuse
The elderly are especially a target for electroshock when Medicare covers the practice. Between 2012 and 2015, Medicare spent $40.5 million on the procedure alone, which doesn’t include the costs of the anesthesia used to prevent the patient feeling the violence and pain of up to 460 volts of electricity sent through their brain, or any other related expenses. In 2015, Medicare paid $10.9 million for 21,654 people to be electroshocked for essentially a few minutes of electricity that may cause lifelong damage.
Similarly, in the UK, for 2016-17, 67 percent of patients receiving acute courses of ECT were female, as were 74 percent of those receiving “maintenance ECT.” The mean age of patients was 61 for those receiving acute ECT, and 66 for those receiving maintenance ECT.[9] Psychiatrists say that maintenance ECT is to “prevent relapse,” but CCHR says that device manufacturers have never provided clinical studies to the FDA proving efficacy. “Maintenance ECT” is a misnomer for a failed treatment, CCHR states.
Political-Social Control Use of ECT
CCHR also points out that ECT has a long history of being used for political or social control and abuse, including in gulags and prisons — another reason it should be banned:
- Before the American Psychiatric Association (APA) declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973, aversion therapy using electroshock was administered to supposedly curb or “cure” homosexuality.
- In December, Netflix released Wormwood, a documentary series exposing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) mind control experiments in the 1950s-1970s, when psychiatrist Ewen Cameron was in charge of horrific tests using electroshock treatment to “de-pattern” individuals, often erasing the patient’s memory.[10] In a 1960 paper published in the journal Comprehensive Psychiatry, Cameron described “depatterning” as “The extensive breakup of the existing patterns of behavior ... by means of intensive electroshock therapy usually carried out in association with prolonged sleep.... There is complete amnesia for all events of his life.”[11]
- A CIA document of 3 December 1951 obtained through FOIA talked about the use of electroshock to make a man talk. An unnamed psychiatrist quoted in the CIA document stated that the lower setting of the ECT device used “produced in the individual excruciating pain” and that the individual “would be quite willing to give information if threatened with the use of this machine.” Further, a person “could gradually be reduced through the use of electro-shock treatment to the vegetable level” and “... [t]he standard electric-shock machine could be used in two ways. One setting ... produced the normal electric shock treatment (including convulsion) with amnesia after a number of treatments.... [T]he other or lower setting of the machine produced a different type of shock... [when it] was applied without convulsion, it had the effect of making a man talk...”[12]
- A psychiatrist described his colleagues’ use of electroshock to torture prisoners of the French during the 1954-62 Algerian War: “There are, for instance, psychiatrists in Algiers, known to numerous prisoners, who have given electric shock treatments to the accused and have questioned them during the waking phase, which is characterized by a certain confusion, a relaxation of resistance, a disappearance of the person’s defenses.”[13]
- In 1949, not yet 27 years old, singer Judy Garland was subjected to the violence and degradation of electroshock. Gerald Frank, in his book Judy, wrote, “She was abysmally discouraged; her years of analysis had not helped her ... she had no respect for psychiatrists, she had seen more than a dozen of them and they had all failed her.”
- Actress Frances Farmer’s life was portrayed by Jessica Lange in the 1982 movie “Frances.” It was a story of the savage, brutal and unforgivable harm done to one of Hollywood’s most talented actresses — six years forcibly held in mental institutions and forced to undergo electroshock.
- In the 1970s, thousands were committed to psychiatric hospitals and prisons in Soviet Russia where they were subjected to electroshock and drug “treatment” to facilitate their “reform” — suppress political dissidents.[14]
- In March 2016, a government pathologist from Sunderland County in the United Kingdom determined that 71-year-old Elsie Tindle died after electroshock triggered an epileptic fit, which caused irreparable brain damage. The pathologist concluded Tindle had suffered a permanent epileptic seizure and the brain was completely starved of oxygen during the prolonged fit in 2015. After the third ECT session, Ms. Tindle fell ill the following day and died 25 days later.[15]
Dr. Colin Ross, a Texas psychiatrist and author, explains that existing ECT literature shows “there is a lot of brain damage, there is memory loss, the death rate does go up, the suicide rate doesn’t go down. [I]f those are the facts from a very well-designed, big study, then you’d have to conclude we shouldn’t do ECT ... the literature that exists strongly supports the conclusion that it isn’t effective beyond the period of time of the treatment and there are a lot of dangers and side effects and a lot of damage....”[16] “We’re talking about serious complications like cardiovascular death from stroke and heart attack,” he says. “Given that, it’s really astonishing just how tolerant of ECT that mainstream psychiatry is.”[17]
CCHR says that while administrators of electroshock tout it as “therapy,” its recipients have said it is a form of torture. In addition to renewing its call for more petition signatures to support a ban on ECT, CCHR also wants family members of those who have experienced adverse effects from ECT to contact it and report the abuse. Click here to fill out the report form online or call 1-800-869-2247.
CCHR is a mental health industry watchdog organization that works for patient protections and encourages the public to take action against mental health abuse. In the course of its 48 years, it has helped get more than 180 laws enacted, including the ban of ECT use in children in several U.S. states. As a nonprofit, CCHR relies on memberships and donations to carry out its mission and actions to ban the use of electroshock. Click here to support the cause.
Contact: Amber Rauscher, media@cchr.org or (323) 467-4242.
References:
[1] Bonnie Burstow, “Electroshock as a Form of Violence Against Women,” Violence Against Women, Vol. 12, No. 4., Apr. 2006, p. 378, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/602d/2a60d4eaf167a1941d0f158bb4fc67281f7e.pdf.
[2] https://www.change.org/p/ban-electroshock-ect-device-being-used-on-children-the-elderly-and-vulnerable-patients.
[3] John Read, Chelsea Arnold, “Is Electroconvulsive Therapy for Depression More Effective Than Placebo? A Systematic Review of Studies Since 2009,” Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry Volume 19, Number 1, 2017, pp. 5-23(19), http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/springer/ehpp/2017/00000019/00000001/art00002.
[4] Ibid., John Read, Chelsea Arnold.
[5] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/electroconvulsive-therapy-and-women-abuse-or-treatment_us_5a406a12e4b06cd2bd03dbec.
[6] Op. cit., Bonnie Burstow.
[7] https://www.madinamerica.com/2015/07/women-ect-and-memory.
[8] “Electroconvulsive therapy mostly used on women and older people, says study,” The Guardian, 20 Oct. 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/20/electroconvulsive-therapy-ect-mostly-used-women-older-people-nhs.
[9] Ibid., “Electroconvulsive therapy mostly used on women and older people, says study.”
[10] “The top secret CIA experiment behind Stranger Things and new Netflix drama Wormwood,” The Sun (UK), 24 Dec. 2017, https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5115368/the-top-secret-cia-experiment-behind-stranger-things-and-new-netflix-drama-wormwood.
[11] D. Ewen Cameron, “Production of Differential Amnewsia as a Factor in the Treatment of Schizophrenia,” Comprehensive Psychiatry, Feb 1960, Vol 1, Issue 1, pp 26-34, http://www.comppsychjournal.com/article/S0010-440X(60)80047-8/fulltext.
[12] Document obtained via the Freedom of Information Act dealing with the Central Intelligence Agency's MK-ULTRA program "Artichoke" dated 3 December 1951 entitled, "Artichoke"--... (blanked out).
[13] Franz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, (Grove Press, New York, 1965). p. 138.
[14] “The Soviet Gulag – Stalin’s Slave Camps,” 24 Feb 2016, https://disorderedworld.com/2016/02/24/the-soviet-gulag-stalins-slave-camps.
[15] “Woman died after NHS electric shock therapy was given without consent or second opinion,” The Mirror (UK), 11 Mar. 2016, http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/woman-died-after-nhs-electric-7540901.
[16] Testimony of Dr. Colin Ross, M. D., 10 May 2004.
[17] http://www.freedommag.org/issue/201411-held-back/reform/shock-treatment-truth-behind-electroshock-therapy.html.
Related Links
Ban Electroshock (ECT) Device Being Used on Children, the Elderly and Vulnerable Patients
Learn the Documented Facts & Statistics About Modern Electroshock (ECT)
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Original Source: CCHR: New Call for Ban on Electroshock Treatment, Citing Violence Against Women, Children and Elderly
