Shock Your Way to Happiness

Very simply, electroshock destroys minds and can kill. Touted by psychiatrists as "scientific" and therapeutic, ECT is as sophisticated and beneficial as hitting someone over the head with a sledgehammer. It consists of searing the brain with 180 to 460 volts of electricity. This causes a severe convulsion or a grand mal seizure identical to an epileptic fit.

Women and the elderly, in particular, are psychiatrys principal targets. The death rate among the elderly from ECT is about one in every 200. A 1993 Texas government report found that one in 197 patients died within two weeks of receiving this treatment. Other studies document that electroshock inflicts irreversible brain damage, memory loss and a deterioration of intellectual ability.

Electroshock also has a sordid history as a weapon of torture and mind control.

When you deal with vulnerable people who are in desperate need of help, using ECT is not only betrayal, it is criminal assault. Electroshock should not be available as a choice, just as Thalidomide is not available to pregnant women. Psychiatrists who administer it for a living have a financial incentive to lie about its effects. In the United States alone it is a $3 billion-a-year industry. It takes government action to safeguard its citizens by outlawing ECT.

Get more data on this by googling "CCHR", some good stuff.

Best,

Informed M.D.

I agree with the above comments. Electroshock destroys the mind. There is still a reward thats been out for 20 years for $50,000 for any psychiatrys who would have ETC conducted on them lol.

This video is shocking!

http://www.cchr.org/#/videos/making-a-killing-introduction

Well, this treatment is meant for the people who have already tried everything else, drugs and therapy, so now they have something to look up to. Its probably, for them, a last ditch effort to get there life back. Treatment for the patents consists of a 800 milliamp shock only lasts for 1 to 6 seconds while they are sedated, so they don't feel any pain from it. There isn't that much brain damage, most of the time its just mild amnesia, so to many, it would be worth the risk.

I can believe that it might work as a treatment of last resort, but I don't think that it's too predicatable.

As far as I know, there aren't any specific targets. The electricity is applied, and then you see how it worked. 'Resetting the brain' implies a measure of control and predictability that is probably not accurate.

Oh, and the anaesthesia is quite useful. Early experiments tended to leave patients with damage to such vital items as the spine, due to the strong muscular convulsions that accompanied the procedure.

So, it may work as last resort, but it would be nice if it could be significantly refined.

a little info about "CCHR" from wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Commission_on_Human_Rights

"The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR; also sometimes known as the Citizens Committee on Human Rights) is an advocacy group established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and psychiatrist Thomas Szasz.[citation needed] The group promotes several video campaigns which support views against psychiatry. CCHR describes psychiatrists and psychologists as "Professional Rapists, Perverts and Pedophiles".[1]"

so i wouldn't believe the above comments

Forgetting whether you support Shock Treatment or not, the thing I found most interesting about this article was it's lack of science.

There is a description about how treatments are performed but nothing really about how treatments work. Just a vague statement saying they "think" it reboots the brain.

How about some information on why they think that? Even some statistical data about the results would have been good.

The article doesn't support the idea of Shock Treatment as Science, so I guess we have to assume that it is not.

In response to flash killers wiki data, this is directly from the CCRHs website

http://www.cchr.org/#/faq/faq-is-cchr-cos

"CCHR is an independent organization. It comprises members of the Church of Scientology and many others of various denominations, faiths and cultural beliefs. Scientologists are not unique in their view that psychiatry is harmful. People from all walks of life are concerned about the destructive impact of psychiatry on society. They work with CCHR to do something effective about it. CCHR's Board of Advisors—called Commissioners—include prominent doctors, lawyers, artists, educators, businessmen, civil and human rights representatives and professionals who see it as their duty to expose and help abolish any and all physically damaging practices in the field of mental health."

Let me begin by stating a few things:

1) I am not a Scientologist, and I approach most Scientologist with equal parts pity and contempt (not unlike how I approach a homeless person outside a store).

2) I am not a Psycologist and have sat in seminary "counsiling" classes where the proff bashed Psycology to good effect.

3) As a crazy person myself, I am often completely offended at the idea that I need to be "fixed" in order to exist or live a full life.

Electroshock has got some bad press over the years: poor old Randly McMurphy getting fried by Nurse Ratchet. Of course, Ken Kasey volunteered to do far worse things to his mind in his little Kool-Aid trip.

The point of this article was to point out that electroshock is still being used, but not humanely, and should not be the baby tossed out with the bath water.

So, 1 out of 200 die? That is the nature of medicine. How many of 200 brain tumor removals leads to death within two weeks? Heart/lung transplants? Bone marrow transplants?

Let me pile up my triple stack of beefs here:

1) Calling on an organization dedicated to eradicating Psycology in all forms to comment on anything having to do with Psycology is going to result in a slanted arguement. That group also would have a problem with the medications taken up to that point, the counseling given, and would rather have the poor person hold some paddles and talk about the unhappy alien spirits living within them.

2) Electroshock is, admittedly, hamfisted science. They don't know why it works, why it sometimes doesn't, or what the consequences will be. What they do know is that sometimes it works, even when all else has failed. Trial and error is the worst kind of science, but it is also the oldest form and still valid science.

3) Leave all us crazy people alone Psychology! We like being crazy, no matter how much some of us might deny it, or else we wouldn't be. Crazy people deserve all the rights to be just as cravy and offensive as everyone else gets. After all, homosexuality was considered crazy not that long ago, and now they get to go around as flaming as they want to be. Why shouldn't Neurotics be allowed to pick the pretty flowers no one else can see? What is wrong with tourturing strays if no one else wants them? Those of us who are living alternative mental lifestyles deserve the respect and toleration that every other minority gets! Nut jobs unite! We already have Congress and the White House, and next, the world!

Oakspar,

I found your comment to express quite a few of my own thoughts, and found it helpfull, untill it reached your third "stack of beef".
I sincerely hope that it was humorously intended, as frankly you seem to assosiate "crazy" people as hippies that "Pick pretty flower no one else can see". If you are talking about mental illness, this is by all means NOT what "crazy" is about. "Crazy" as you seem to define is it is a rather broad definition, and even though some pick pretty flowers, most do not.
Personally i have a schizophrenic sister, suffering from intruisive ideas that were, to say the least, unconfortable for the rest of us.
No one liked her condition, including herself, having suffered three relapses after being "cured" of her condition. Having been very destructive to herself and the environnement around her, we have feared her death multiple times, in the periods before she would do something so bad that someone would finally notice, and put her in a mental hospital ("we" being me and my family, that she moved away from to start studying in the university, something that has had little success).

I myself am not "crazy", or perhaps a little, as my sisters condition is taking a significant toll on me, and i fear it may end in a depression.

Sorry if i didn't quite catch the humorous aspect of this.

And to the people defending CCHR, please, just please stop. Information taken from their own site is frankly just wrong, as most information broadcasted by the church of scientology is. Scientology has an outstanding history of supression, brainwashing, opression and misinformation, starting with their leader, L. Ron Hubbard (who went on some adventures that could rightfully be classified as "crazy")

OK Kids, I am a nutjob. Schizo-effective Bi-polar type 1 actually.

As long as I take my meds I'm fine. Hopefully the fact that I can write without a crayon helps prove that I am in control of myself and not sitting in a corner drooling. Althogh, at times, that sounds mighty nice....

Anyhow, I have been locked up in a laughing academy on more than one occasion. My first "Club Med" used ECT for those who have tried everything else. I tried it once but didn't like the headache afterward.
For those who have only read about this but never experienced it or anyone who has tried it, here are a few things that never get out.
The patient walks into the OR type room and lays down. They get pleasantly stoned and fall asleep. About 5 minutes later, they wake up, walk out of the room and carry one doing whatever it was they were doing 25 minutes ago.

There are no leather restraints and the patient doesn't buck up and down while their mouths are tied shut.
Some do get amnesia but none that I know have ever had permanent damage. Some, like me, get migraines and never do it again.
I have seen it do wonders to some very sick people and do nothing to others. It is a shame that most of those who oppose it do so because of some movie they saw or book they read describing it as something from the inquisition. It is not in any way the draconian torture some would have you believe.
The one thing that always bothered me is that no one knows why or how it works. That I admit is scary and why I only did it once. Hopefully the process will become understood and that it may actually help more people.
I wrote this because of the image that we nutjobs face and the ignorance surrounding our treatment. It is bad enough that we face the stigma surrounding us loonies without even more "Cruising" perpetuated by those who simple believe everything they see or hear without question.

OK, I'm done. If you excuse me, I have to finish my phone call with Napoleon. I have to bitch at him about Waterloo.

One point the author made her first paragraph needs correction.

When caught out in an open space in a lightning storm (Thunderstorm), The prone position - laying down - is NOT RECOMMENDED, it is a hazardous position as a lightning strike can create a large potential difference along the length of a human body resulting in electrocution and/or serious internal & external burns. The optimal ground contact protective position to assume is to squat down (crouch) with your feet together, your head tucked down and ears covered. Not everyone can squat this way or for any length of time, so do your best to assume a crouched position. Making ground contact only with your feet - close together - minimizes potential difference (voltages) between body parts and therefore minimizes the killer current flow and its conduction path. Covering your ears may prevent eardrum ruptures.

Hooah!