Shock Value – Electroconvulsive therapy on the upswing.

“The number of treatments in California — one of the few states that have mandatory reporting — increased from about 13,000 to more than 20,000 between 1994 and 2004. Although the District, Maryland and Virginia do not require such reporting, Johns Hopkins Hospital treats about 125 people with ECT annually, a number that has not changed much recently, according to Irving Reti, head of Hopkins’s ECT unit; at Sheppard Pratt outside Baltimore, ECT physician Jack Vaeth says his service does about 60 treatments a week, an increase over the past decade.

While no one fully understands why ECT works, many psychiatrists believe that using an electric current to produce a “grand mal” — or generalized brain — seizure can “reboot” the brain when medications and psychotherapy fail. Just last week, a commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) suggested that, despite its demonstrated effectiveness, ECT remains underused, primarily because of its stigmatized history.”

Stigmatized history? Or the fact that it erases the memories of those who use it???
Sure you are not depressed anymore, we just turned your brain to mush and gellied up your tissues. You can’t even remember who you are!!! But it was worth it because you are not depressed!!! What a load, this treatment should be BANNED!!!
I remember telling one of my therapists a few years ago that electroshock was on the upswing and he told me that I was wrong, it had been banned worldwide because it was ineffective. But the psychiatrists just keep on keepin on with failed treatments. Makes lots of money and shuts up those awful patients.
Wether you get a surgical lobotomy (which are also on the upswing, they just changed the name to cingulotomy, a chemical Lobotomy, or an electro lobotomy, the effect on the brain is the same. Major amounts of brain damage.
Recently a somewhat honest hearted psychiatrist made some public comments about his profession.
He said:

A Psychiatrist Airs His Professional Doubts

“Did you ever stop to wonder or ask yourself ‘what am I doing?’ I did and in many ways I wish I had not. As a Psychiatrist, I still do not know what our profession is trying to do. It seems we have a series of solutions and now we are trying to find the problems that they can solve. My observations are either anecdotal or part of research that I have done as a Psychiatric Auditor and are based on my 38 years experience in the field of Psychiatry.

Psychiatrists are treating two major populations: Adults and Juveniles. These populations are further subdivided into severe and mild disturbances.

I am not a Juvenile Psychiatrist, but I speak from impressions and my readings in the field. There is nothing more heart breaking than the severely mentally ill juvenile. We have increased our arsenal of medications, but in results and understanding, compared to other medical professions, our success rate is poor. Prevention is a distant dream.

The mildly mentally ill juveniles are a cause of concern to me. Psychiatry has waltzed into learning disorders with the crusading gusto that only psychiatrists seem to have. We are witnessing the ‘medicinization’ of a former outlawed drug. The criteria for using Ritalin far too often go unmet. There is no doubt in my mind that children that would not be given Ritalin by experts in the field are receiving it. No one can say with honesty and certainty what the effect of Ritalin use in juveniles will have on their brains as they age. Yet the Ritalin pushers have an almost messianic fervor for their ‘solution’.

In the adult population, generally speaking, the influence of the Drug Companies is terrifying. Very few research projects disprove the efficacy of a drug when the trial is sponsored by the drug’s manufacturer. Harmful facts that may be discovered are not disclosed. When they are, their importance and significance are downplayed. For example, one of the major, popular, new anti psychotic drugs actively and substantially increases the risk factors for heart attacks or CVAs. In all the adult population the major medical goal is to reduce these risk factors. Only severely mentally ill psychiatric patients are the exception.

It has been shown that after 10 years of illness a psychotic not taking medications is four times more likely to be symptom free than one that is taking medications. Read that again. You would expect the complete opposite. In spite of the hype, the quality of life in patients using the older medications are better than the new. So we are paying more, endangering more and getting less. Not very impressive is it?”

I appreciate his honesty, and wish more psychiatrists had the guts to do some introspection, you would think they would be the most honest in terms of “ANALYZING” themselves as a profession. But no, fearfully and sadly, many do not take the time to question all of the drug reps in the office, the perks, and the money rolling in earned off the tortured minds of the mentally ill. Here is a critique I wrote of a very pompous edict from the President of the APA a couple of years ago. He was publicly questioning certain practices in the profession.
I am a perfect example of someone who has healed holisticaly after psychosis. I had a post partum psychosis after the birth of my first babe, and was forced by the courts to take toxic drugs for 14 months. Then I went completely the other direction and used Sunriders Chinese Herbs, Nutrition, Shaklee Foods, and spent thousands of hours reading about the history of psychiatry, and quickly realized that a debate was raging and I was in the middle of it.
Since those days in 1989-90 when I was forced to eat toxic chemicals to make the chemicals in my brain “all better”, I have not taken ONE PILL in the intervening years. Not one.
And I have given birth to four additional children.
I shudder to think what my life would have been like had I been on psychiatric meds for the past 16 years.
Jenny Hatch