"I told him [Dr. King] that the shock treatments were
making me forget everything and everybody that I was supposed
to know. 'What difference does it make?' he asked sincerely.
'What difference does it make?!' I exclaimed, suddenly enraged.
'My whole life was just wiped out!' I now had amnesia. An
entire lifetime of thirty-some years filled with knowledge,
experience, memories...."
-- Wendy Funk, "What Difference Does It Make?", The Journey
of a Soul Survivor, Cranbrook, BC, 1999.
"I had 108 hospital admissions and approximately 80
ECT treatments from 1967 to 1992. They were treating me
for an addiction. Today when I walk down the halls of the
Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital, patients come up to me and
say 'Hi,' ... I have no idea who they are. They say I spent
a lot of time with them, but I have no memory. Part of me
is missing forever.... I am dead set against ECT under any
circumstances. Why would delivering electricity through
a brain be anything less than destructive and damaging?"
-- Wayne Lax, Kenora, Ontario, January, 2000.
Some Key Points:
1. The "ECT" procedure consists of being subjected
to an average of 150-200 volts, sometimes higher dosage,
of electricity to your brain for a half-second to 2 seconds,
which causes a grand mal seizure and convulsion. You are
unconscious, heavily sedated by a tranquilizer. Since a
"muscle relaxant" completely paralyzes your body,
including your lungs you can't breathe so you're administered
artificial respiration (oxygen). You wake up 10-20 minutes
later in a "recovery room" with severe headache,
confused, disoriented,and frightened.
-- Personal testimony from numerous shock survivors.
-- The American Psychiatric Association, “The
Practice of Electroconvulsive Therapy: A Task Force
Report”, (1990)
-- Dr. Peter Breggin, Electroshock: Its Brain-Disabling
Effects, (1979); http://www.breggin.com/electroshock.html
-- D.G. Cameron, "ECT: Sham Statistics, the Myth
of Convulsive Therapy and the Case for Consumer Misinformation."
Journal of Mind and Behavior, 15, pp. 177-198,
(1994).
www.ect.org
2. The first electroshock treatment was forcibly administered
to a homeless "schizophrenic" man in fascist Italy
in 1938.
-- Thomas Szasz, M.D., "From the Slaughterhouse
to the Madhouse", in L.R. Frank, ed.,
The History of Shock Treatment, pp. 8-11 (1978).
See also: http://www.enabling.org/ia/szasz/
3. Electroshock ("electroconvulsive therapy"
or "E.C.T.") has never been proven medically safe
or effective.
-- US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), “Neurological
devices: proposed rule to reclassify the electroconvulsive
devices intended for use in treating severe depression”
21 CDR, Part 882 [Docket No. 82P-0316], in Federal
Register, 55 (172), pp. 36578-36590, (September
5, 1990).
-- P. Breggin, “Electroshock: Scientific, Ethical
and Political Issues". International J. of Risk
and Safety in Medicine. 11, pp. 5-40 (1998). http://www.breggin.com/electroshock.html
4. Electroshock always causes some permanent memory loss
and brain damage.
-- J. Friedberg, M.D., "Shock Treatment, Brain
Damage and Memory Loss: A Neurological Perspective,"
American Journal of Psychiatry, 134, pp. 1010-1014,
(1977); also published in R. Morgan, ed., Electroshock:
The Case Against, (1990).
-- P. Breggin, “Electroshock: Scientific, Ethical
and Political Issues". International J. of Risk
and Safety in Medicine. 11, pp. 5-40 (1998); P.
Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry, pp. 195-199, (1991).
http://www.breggin.com/electroshock.html
-- L.R.Frank, "Electroshock: Death, Brain Damage,
Memory Loss, and Brainwashing", Journal of Mind
and Behavior, 11, pp. 489-512, (1990).
-- Phoenix Rising: Electroshock Issue, vol.
4, no. 3/4, (April 1984).
5. Electroshock "works" by causing brain damage.
The effects of every shock procedure are a grand mal seizure,
a convulsion, a coma, severe headache, con- fusion and disorientation,
delirium and organic brain syndrome [brain damage]. Serious
medical complications such as heart failure, brain hemorrhage
and death from electroshock are frequently minimized, not
reported or covered up.
-- R. Abrams, M.D., Electroconvulsive Therapy
(1988).
-- P. Breggin, Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry,
pp. 129-156, (1997); Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry,
pp. 195-199, (1991). http://www.breggin.com/electroshock.html
-- L. Frank, “Electroshock: Death, Brain Damage,
Memory Loss and Brainwashing", Journal of Mind
and Behavior, 11, pp. 489-512, (1990).
http://www.mindfreedom.org/mindfreedom/shock/therapy.shtml
http://www.wildestcolts.com/mentalhealth/shock.html
6. Many shock survivors have also suffered permanent intellectual
impairments such as inability to concentrate and learn new
material; several writers, artists, actors and other professionals
have had their careers tragically ruined after undergoing
electroshock.
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar,(1963).
-- Gene Tierney, Self-Portrait, (1979).
-- Wendy Funk, "What Difference Does It Make?"
Journey of a Soul Survivor, (1999).
-- Connie Neil, Phoenix Rising (vol.4 No.3/4),
20A-21A, (1984).
-- Lou Reed: http://www.mindfreedom.org/electroshock/postshock.html
-- "The Case of Eve" (Marilyn Rice), in R.
Morgan, ed., Electroshock: The Case Against (1990).
7. Nobel Prize-winning author and former Toronto Star reporter
Ernest Hemingway killed himself with a shotgun after undergoing
two series of shock treatments in 1961. He told a close
friend, "Well, what is the sense of ruining my memory,
which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It
was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient."
-- A.E. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir,
(1966).
http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/hemingway/party-essay.htm
8. Women and the elderly, particularly elderly women,
have been the prime targets of electroshock. In Canada and
the U.S., approximately 70% of shock survivors are women,
45% - 50% are over 60 years old, and several are 80 years
and older.
-- Ministry of Health, Government of Ontario, ECT Statistics
1995-99.
-- D. Kroessler and B. Fogel, “Electroconvulsive
Therapy for Major Depression in the Oldest Old",
Amer. J. of Geriatric Psychiatry, 1:1:30-37,
(1993)
-- S. Boodman, "Changes in Population and Insurance
Make Elderly Women Most Common Patients", The
Washington Post, (September 24, 1996)
-- D. Weitz, "Electroshocking Elderly People:
Another Psychiatric Abuse”, Int. J. Psychology
& Psychotherapy, Vol. 15, No. 2, (1997).
9. Although psychiatrists claim that depression or "clinical
depression" is the main "clinical indication"
to administer electroshock, people with other conditions
such as: anxiety, post-partum depression, mania, alcoholism,
"schizophrenia" and dementia, have also undergone
electroshock.
-- L.Frank, ed., The History of Shock Treatment,
(1978);
-- P. Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry, pp.184-215,
(1991). http://www.breggin.com/electroshock.html
10. There is no such thing as "informed consent"
to electroshock because: a) psychiatrists and other doctors
routinely refuse to inform patients about the common and
serious risks of permanent memory loss and brain damage,
b) psychiatric hospital wards and "mental health"
centres where electroshock is usually administered are inherently
intimidating and coercive, and c) psychiatrists and other
doctors routinely fail to mention safe and humane alternatives
such as self-help or support groups, community crisis centres,
diet, exercise, meditation, friends....
-- Personal communication between many shock survivors
and lawyers during the last 20 years in Canada, the
U.S., and the U.K.
11. Ted Chabasinski was six years old when he was brutally
shocked and abused in New York's Bellevue Hospital. “I
was one of the first children to be 'treated' with electric
shock, I was six years old.... ‘I won't go to shock
treatment, I won't!’ It took three attendants to hold
me. At first Dr. Bender herself threw the switch, but later,
when I was no longer an interesting case, my tormentor was
different each time.”
-- Ted Chabasinski, "The Other Half-- A Horror
Story", Phoenix Rising, vol.2, no.2, (1981);
originally published in Rising Up Crazy, (1973).
12. Several psychologists and psychiatrists in the UK
have demanded that shock be immediately banned for children.
-- S.Baldwin & Y. Jones, "ECT and Minors:
When More is Less", Behavioural and Cognitive
Psychotherapy, 24, pp. 319-322, (1996).
-- S. Baldwin, (Editorial against ECT for children),
Social Sciences in Health, 2(1), pp. 1-2, (1996).
-- T. Baker, "ECT and Young Minds". Lancet,
345, p. 65, (1995).
13. Since the early 1980’s in the United States and
Canada, there have been several public protests against
electroshock demanding its moratorium or abolition. Many
shock survivors and a few U.S. psychiatrists and neurologists
have demanded a total ban or moratorium on electroshock.
Except for psychotherapist, Dr. Bonnie Burstow, no Canadian
health professional has demanded its abolition.
-- P. Breggin, "Electroshock: scientific, ethical
and political issues", International Journal
of Risk and Safety in Medicine, vol. 11, pp. 5-40,
(1998); http://www.breggin.com/electroshock.html
-- B. Burstow, "My Radical Beginnings", in
B. Burstow & D. Weitz, eds, Shrink Resistant:
The Struggle Against Psychiatry in Canada (1988),
pp. 271-284.
