What is ECT?
Electro shock is the 'medical treatment' of sending a charge of electricity through a person's brain to induce a seizure or convulsion. These days it is usually called ECT, meaning Electro Convulsive Therapy. Less offensively to psychiatric survivors, ECT stands for Electro Convulsive Torture or Electro Convulsive Trauma.
What happens?
The patient is educated on the benefits of ECT and then invited to give their 'informed consent' to receive electro shock.
If the patient doesn't sign the paper, there is a hearing which the patient may or may not attend. Two psychiatrists will inform a judge of their opinion that the patient should have ECT. If the judge agrees with them, the patient will be forced to have electo shock against their will, courtesy of the Mental Health Act of 1992.
The procedure is administered by a psychiatrist, an anaesthetist, an ECT nurse and a recovery nurse in an operating theatre setting with emergency equipment at hand in case of heart-failure or a stroke. Short-acting muscle relaxing and anaesthetic drugs are administered to stop the patient thrashing around during convulsion and breaking bones or sustaining other injuries that were a common result of unmodified ECT. The convulsion will be visible as a tremor in her upper and lower limbs, or perhaps just the fingers and toes, thanks to the drugs which act like a chemical seat-belt. However the use of these drugs necessitates a higher level of electricity to ensure that the patient will have a seizure.
The level of electricity to be used on the patient's brain will vary depending on factors like her age. A human skull has a high resistance to electricity, and elderly brains are particularly resistant and will need a higher charge. The electricity levels will be applied and monitored by the psychiatrist by use of an ECT machine.
The anaesthetised patient will receive bagged ventilation from the anaesthetist. As a precaution a disposable mouth guard will have been inserted in her mouth, and her false teeth will have been removed if she wears them. Two electrodes will be placed on the patient's skull, either on both sides of the head, or else both on one side, usually the right. Electricity will be applied and she will convulse for at least 25 seconds, although she will be totally unaware of it under anaesthesia.
The next thing she will know, she'll be in the recovery room, waking up and feeling disorientated. She may have a headache, and will have some gaps in her memory. It it is not all over yet. Most people receive a course of 2-3 treatments a week over 2-4 weeks.
If the patient doesn't sign the paper, there is a hearing which the patient may or may not attend. Two psychiatrists will inform a judge of their opinion that the patient should have ECT. If the judge agrees with them, the patient will be forced to have electo shock against their will, courtesy of the Mental Health Act of 1992.
The procedure is administered by a psychiatrist, an anaesthetist, an ECT nurse and a recovery nurse in an operating theatre setting with emergency equipment at hand in case of heart-failure or a stroke. Short-acting muscle relaxing and anaesthetic drugs are administered to stop the patient thrashing around during convulsion and breaking bones or sustaining other injuries that were a common result of unmodified ECT. The convulsion will be visible as a tremor in her upper and lower limbs, or perhaps just the fingers and toes, thanks to the drugs which act like a chemical seat-belt. However the use of these drugs necessitates a higher level of electricity to ensure that the patient will have a seizure.
The level of electricity to be used on the patient's brain will vary depending on factors like her age. A human skull has a high resistance to electricity, and elderly brains are particularly resistant and will need a higher charge. The electricity levels will be applied and monitored by the psychiatrist by use of an ECT machine.
The anaesthetised patient will receive bagged ventilation from the anaesthetist. As a precaution a disposable mouth guard will have been inserted in her mouth, and her false teeth will have been removed if she wears them. Two electrodes will be placed on the patient's skull, either on both sides of the head, or else both on one side, usually the right. Electricity will be applied and she will convulse for at least 25 seconds, although she will be totally unaware of it under anaesthesia.
The next thing she will know, she'll be in the recovery room, waking up and feeling disorientated. She may have a headache, and will have some gaps in her memory. It it is not all over yet. Most people receive a course of 2-3 treatments a week over 2-4 weeks.
Electroshock? They still do that? You bet they do, to more than 100,000 Americans every year! Since 1938, psychiatrists have subjected millions of people throughout the world to electroshock (shock therapy, electroconvulsive treatment, ECT), but the public knows little about this harmful practice.
The Electroshock Quotationary by shock survivor and editor Leonard Roy Frank is an illustrated, 154-page collection of chronologically arranged quotations, excerpts, and essays about the history and nature of electroshock: who gets it and why, how it's administered, what the experience is like, what its effects are, and how the struggle surrounding its use is being played out within and beyond the psychiatric profession. More than 400 entries dating from 47 A.D. to the present are included in this highly readable and carefully researched expose of one of medicine's most controversial procedures.
"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." Max Fink, electroshock psychiatrist,1996.
"The magnitude of the [electroshock] atrocity is too great to communicate. That's why it's the perfect crime." Rich Winkel, electroshock survivor, 2005
Electroshock is a psychiatric procedure that induces a grand mal seizure, or convulsion, by passing electricity through the brain. Two- thirds of those who undergo ECT are women, half are elderly, and payment is usually covered by insurance. Electroshock is a multi- billion-dollar-a-year industry. Opponents charge that electroshock causes permanent brain damage, memory loss, learning disability, and a significant number of deaths; is often used as an instrument of social control; and is sometimes administered by means of coercion or outright force and seldom with genuine informed consent.
Frank edited the best-selling Random House Webster's Quotationary in 1998 and The History of Shock Treatment in 1978. Active in the psychiatric survivors movement since 1972, he is a member of MindFreedom International, a coalition of more than 100 grassroots groups working for human rights in psychiatry, and also The Coalition for the Abolition of Electroshock in Texas, from whose website The Electroshock Quotationary may be downloaded free of charge at http://www.endofshock.com/102C_ECT.PDF
The Electroshock Quotationary by shock survivor and editor Leonard Roy Frank is an illustrated, 154-page collection of chronologically arranged quotations, excerpts, and essays about the history and nature of electroshock: who gets it and why, how it's administered, what the experience is like, what its effects are, and how the struggle surrounding its use is being played out within and beyond the psychiatric profession. More than 400 entries dating from 47 A.D. to the present are included in this highly readable and carefully researched expose of one of medicine's most controversial procedures.
"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." Max Fink, electroshock psychiatrist,1996.
"The magnitude of the [electroshock] atrocity is too great to communicate. That's why it's the perfect crime." Rich Winkel, electroshock survivor, 2005
Electroshock is a psychiatric procedure that induces a grand mal seizure, or convulsion, by passing electricity through the brain. Two- thirds of those who undergo ECT are women, half are elderly, and payment is usually covered by insurance. Electroshock is a multi- billion-dollar-a-year industry. Opponents charge that electroshock causes permanent brain damage, memory loss, learning disability, and a significant number of deaths; is often used as an instrument of social control; and is sometimes administered by means of coercion or outright force and seldom with genuine informed consent.
Frank edited the best-selling Random House Webster's Quotationary in 1998 and The History of Shock Treatment in 1978. Active in the psychiatric survivors movement since 1972, he is a member of MindFreedom International, a coalition of more than 100 grassroots groups working for human rights in psychiatry, and also The Coalition for the Abolition of Electroshock in Texas, from whose website The Electroshock Quotationary may be downloaded free of charge at http://www.endofshock.com/102C_ECT.PDF
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