Psychiatry's 'Shock Doctrine': Are We Really OK With Electroshocking Toddlers?

By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet. Posted February 4, 2009.

In January 2007, the journal Neuropsychopharmacology published an article about a large-scale study on the cognitive effects (immediately and six months later) of currently used ECT techniques. The researchers found that modern ECT techniques produce "pronounced slowing of reaction time" and "persisting retrograde amnesia" (the inability to recall events that occurred before the traumatic event) that continue six months after treatment.

While ECT proponents admit to collateral damage, especially memory loss, they claim that it is an effective treatment. However, a Kitty Dukakis testimonial is not exactly science. With respect to preventing suicide, the Journal of Affective Disorders in 1999 ("Retrospective Controlled Study of Inpatient ECT: Does it Prevent Suicide?") reported, "We failed to demonstrate that ECT had prevented suicide in hospitalized patients."

Longtime ECT critic, psychiatrist Peter Breggin, in the International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine in 1998 ("Electroshock: Scientific, Ethical, and Political Issues"), reported that at establishment psychiatry's "Consensus Conference on ECT" in 1985, ECT advocates were unable to come forth with one controlled study showing that ECT had any positive effect beyond four weeks and that many other ECT studies showed that it had no positive effect at all. 

The heretical Breggin added, "That ECT had no positive effect after four weeks confirms the brain-disabling principle, since four weeks is the approximate time for significant recovery from the most obvious mind-numbing or euphoric effects of the ECT-induced acute organic brain syndrome." Breggin's "brain-disabling principle" is that even when ECT does "work," it works only temporarily -- the same way that a blow by a sledgehammer or an acid trip might temporarily disconnect one from the reality of one's life and the sources of one's emotional pain.

Psychiatry will always find celebrities who swear by ECT, but the American public rarely hears about those celebrities who have cursed their ECT. In Papa Hemingway, A.E. Hotchner recounts the sad end to Ernest Hemingway's life. Hemingway became extremely depressed, was medicated and ultimately given ECT; but he became even more depressed and complained about the effects of the electroshock:

"Well, what is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business?"

In 1961, after a second series of ECT, Hemingway used his shotgun to commit suicide.

If you feel sorry for Hemingway, then what kind of emotional reaction do you have upon discovering that last year 203 Australian children -- including 55 age 4 and younger -- received ECT?

See more stories tagged with: health, psychiatry, electroconvulsive therapy, electroshock therapy

Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and author of Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green, 2007). His Web site is www.brucelevine.net.

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