ect.org

www.mentalhealth.org.uk
Sept. 26, 2006

From the 1st November to 3rd January, visitors to the Mental Health Foundation’s website will be able to get free access to Depression Relief - an online self-help program that uses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy techniques. The program is being made available by Ultrasis, the healthcare company that developed Beating the Blues, the only computer based treatment for depression recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) for use in the NHS.

Used by Primary Care Trusts in the United Kingdom and employee healthcare providers in the United States, Depression Relief is suitable for anyone experiencing mild or moderate depression. The confidential program allows users to go at their own pace, learning self-help techniques which can help them manage their condition.

“Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is widely recognised as one of the most effective methods for treating depression, yet there is a major shortage of therapists,” said Andrew McCulloch, Chief Executive of the Mental Health Foundation. Most people who want to try Cognitive Behavioural Therapy have to join long NHS waiting lists or pay to see a therapist privately. While online CBT is not a replacement for face-to-face therapy, we need to start investigating other supporting treatments that people with mental health problems can use.”

“Mental health problems can have a negative impact on the well being of any one of us. We want people to know that the tools and techniques for prevention and treatment are available without having to wait months to see a therapist,” said Nigel Brabbins, Chief Executive of Ultrasis Plc. Cost effective online programs need to be more widely available and we hope to reach as many people as possible through the Mental Health Foundation’s website who may want help when NHS services are not available.”

Visit www.mentalhealth.org.uk between 1 November 2006 and 3 January 2007 to get free unlimited access for four weeks. You will need broadband access to the Internet. Depression Relief has been designed for those aged 18 and over. The Mental Health Foundation strongly recommends that people should seek professional medical advice if they are concerned about their mental health.

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Film composer Arnold dies at 84
David Smith
Sunday September 24 2006
The Observer

The tormented but irrepressible career of Sir Malcolm Arnold, the most recorded British composer of all time and the first to win an Oscar, ended last night with his death at the age of 84.

Arnold, who won an Academy Award for his score for The Bridge on the River Kwai, passed away in hospital in Norfolk after suffering a chest infection.

Hours later, his newest work, a ballet version of The Three Musketeers, premiered at the Alhambra in Bradford, West Yorkshire. A special dedication to Arnold’s memory was made before the performance.

Arnold was prodigiously talented but had a tumultuous private life, plagued by severe depression, chronic alcoholism and attempts at suicide. He repeatedly ended up in hospital for insulin treatments and electric shock therapy. Yet he found sufficient peace to compose 132 film scores, including those for Whistle Down the Wind, Hobson’s Choice and The Belles of St Trinian’s. His prolific output also included nine symphonies, seven ballets, two operas, one musical and more than 20 concertos.

Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber insisted that Arnold never received the credit he deserved. ‘I think he was a very, very great composer but uneven in his output,’ he said. ‘Because he had humour in his music he was never fully appreciated by the classical establishment. He was a total genius but a very badly behaved genius - but then so was Mozart.’

Arnold, the youngest of five children from a prosperous family of shoemakers in Northampton, was a rebellious teenager attracted to the creative freedom of jazz. He took up the trumpet after seeing Louis Armstrong play in Bournemouth and, at 17, won a scholarship at the Royal College of Music. By 1943, he was a principal trumpeter with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

His first symphony was performed in 1950 and three years later he wrote a coronation ballet, Homage to the Queen, which was premiered at Covent Garden. His growing reputation brought comparisons with Benjamin Britten and many commissions, including the film scores. He had to write the music for The Bridge on the River Kwai, starring Alec Guinness and William Holden, in just 10 days but it won the Oscar in 1958, partly for its counterpoint melody to the ‘Colonel Bogie’ march.

In the Sixties, following the breakdown of his marriage, Arnold moved to Cornwall with his second wife, but he descended into alcoholism, causing another marital split.

Arnold, who was knighted in 1993, leaves behind two sons and one daughter. His 85th birthday next month was due to be celebrated by concerts around the world.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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Shock Treatment: Efficacy, Memory Loss, and Brain Damage – Psychiatry’s
Don’t Look, Don’t Tell Policy
by Richard A. Warner

This downloadable paper was written by a paralegal in an ECT case that is currently on appeal. He researched the subject for two years, and decided to put that research to use, in this paper.

Shock Treatment: Efficacy, Memory Loss, and Brain Damage

PDF: 300k

One Response »

M E M O R A N D U M

September 21, 2006

A New York State intermediate appellate court, the Appellate Division,
Second Judicial Department, has rejected a challenge by MHLS to a lower
court order authorizing involuntary electro-shock treatment of Simone D.,
a patient at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, a state hospital in
Queens, New York. The Appellate Division, in its 3-to-2 September 19,
2006 decision, Matter of Simone D. (Anonymous), affirmed the lower
court, with a strong dissent by two justices.

The trial court’s order had authorized the administration of up to 30
shock treatments over a period of six months, with the frequency to be
determined by the hospital’s “ECT team.” Simone D. previously had been
given at least 148 shock treatments over her objection by Creedmoor
under previous court orders.

The testimony of the hospital psychiatrist before the hearing court had
established that previous shock treatment had neither brought about a
remission of Simone D.’s depression nor restored her capacity to make
her own treatment decisions, that the claimed benefits always
dissipated upon the discontinuation of shock, and that the treatment had
never brought Simone D. to a condition where Creedmoor was willing to
discharge her to the community. At the conclusion of that doctor’s
testimony she was asked:

Do you have any hope to offer Simone [D.] . . . other than a lifetime of
court ordered electroshock treatment and depression at . . .
Creedmoor Psychiatric Center?

The doctor answered:

I don‚t have, at this particular time, I don‚t have anything else to
offer her.

Cross examination of the doctor also revealed that shock treatment was
discontinued in 1996, due to a frontal organic brain syndrome secondary
to ECT.

The court severely limited the cross examination of the Creedmoor
psychiatrist by Simone D.’s MHLS attorney, disallowing many questions
about the nature of shock treatment and its effect. For example, when
the doctor was questioned about the nature of grand mal seizures and
epilepsy, objections from the hospital’s attorney were sustained and the
court stated that it was “familiar with that”. At another point, in
precluding questioning about shock treatment, the judge declared, “The
court is familiar with how it is done”.

The court also denied MHLS’s repeated requests that an independent
psychiatrist be appointed to assess the desirability of giving Simone D.
further shock treatment.

The Appellate Division’s majority decision ruled that the trial court
“did not improperly curtail the cross-examination” of the hospital
psychiatrist, noting that the cross-examination covered 44 pages of the
hearing transcript while the direct examination took only 13 pages. The
three appellate justices also rejected MHLS’s argument that the hearing
judge improperly relied upon his own presumed knowledge of shock
treatment. Finally, the panel found the denial of the application for
the appointment of an independent psychiatrist to be a proper exercise
of the court’s discretion.

The two dissenting justices argued that the trial judge “prevented
Simone D. from making a record that could be reviewed on appeal and
instead became a silent witness relying on its own knowledge of ECT.”
The dissent found that to be reversible error, “particularly because of
the extensive course of ECT treatments to which Simone D. has been
subjected since 1995 without long-range benefit.”

Since the Appellate Division decision was 3 to 2, and the ruling was on
points of law and not just on the facts, Simone D. may appeal to the
state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, as a matter of right. The
Appellate Division had earlier stayed enforcement of the forced shock
order pending appeal, and that stay will remain in effect while the
decision is appealed to the high court.

While we are disappointed with the outcome of our first level appeal, we
believe that Simone D. has a very strong case, and we are encouraged by
the forceful dissent. We hope that, with the support of one or more
briefs from friends of the court, we will ultimately prevail.

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[*1] In the Matter of Simone D. (Anonymous), appellant; Kathleen Iverson, etc., respondent.

2005-11405, (Index No. 501166/05)

SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, SECOND DEPARTMENT

2006 NY Slip Op 6574; 2006 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 10885

September 19, 2006, Decided

THIS OPINION IS UNCORRECTED AND SUBJECT TO REVISION BEFORE PUBLICATION IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS.

COUNSEL: Mental Hygiene Legal Service, Mineola, N.Y. (Kim L. Darrow and Dennis B. Feld of counsel), for appellant.

Eliot Spitzer, Attorney-General, New York, N.Y. (Michael S. Belohlavek and Patrick J. Walsh of counsel), for respondent.

JUDGES: STEPHEN G. CRANE, J.P., DAVID S. RITTER, GLORIA GOLDSTEIN, REINALDO E. RIVERA, MARK C. DILLON, JJ. RITTER, RIVERA and DILLON, JJ., concur. CRANE, J.P., dissents with memorandum, in which GOLDSTEIN, J., concurs.

OPINION:

DECISION & ORDER

In a proceeding for permission to administer electroconvulsive therapy to a patient without her consent, the patient appeals from an order of the Supreme Court, Queens County (Rosengarten, J.), dated November 29, 2005, which, after a hearing, granted the petition.

ORDERED that the order is affirmed, without costs or disbursements.

In the instant petition, Creedmoor Psychiatric Center (hereinafter Creedmoor) seeks permission to administer electroconvulsive therapy (hereinafter ECT) to the appellant without [**2] her consent. At a hearing held on the petition, Dr. Ella Brodsky, a licensed psychiatrist and the person who administers the ECT at Creedmoor, testified that the appellant suffers from a “major depressive disorder, severe, with chronic features” and was incapable of making decisions regarding her own treatment. In fact, Dr. Brodsky asserted that during a meeting to discuss treatment, at which the appellant, her Spanish-speaking attorney, Dr. Brodsky, and the treatment team were present, the appellant refused to respond or even make eye contact. Dr. Brodsky testified that, although the appellant had benefitted from ECT in the past, such treatments had ceased and the appellant had “decompensated,” i.e., she had become withdrawn, mute, and nonparticipatory, and spent most of her time in a corner in a fetal position. Further, the appellant was not eating properly and had become aggressive and assaultive toward the staff and her fellow patients. Dr. Brodsky noted that [*2] on a prior occasion, the appellant needed to be fed through a tube, which was a “drastic remedy.” By contrast, Dr. Brodsky testified that after the completion of the last course of 30 ECT treatments, the appellant [**3] had gained weight, was eating, drinking, and interacting with others, and “was not aggressive or assaultive at all.” Dr. Brodsky noted that the appellant would be carefully monitored during the administration of ECT to determine her blood pressure, her EKG, her EEG, and her “mini-mental status.” Dr. Brodsky further testified that many other forms of treatment had been tried and failed, including an extensive course of drug therapy, and that ECT was the least restrictive, clinically appropriate treatment for the appellant available at this time. She added, “[w]e don’t have any other choices.”

On cross-examination, counsel for the appellant questioned Dr. Brodsky concerning ECT treatments administered to the appellant in 1995 and 1996 in an effort to demonstrate that the appellant had suffered possible brain damage from those treatments. Dr. Brodsky testified that she had not reviewed the appellant’s ECT records for that time period. She stated that she did not need to review the “old records” because medical assessments were updated so that she could “find everything in the current record, whatever is important for an ECT.” Dr. Brodsky added that the appellant was “regularly” receiving [**4] ECT since 1996. Thus, she opined that what occurred in 1996 was not relevant in assessing the appellant’s current condition.

Counsel also questioned Dr. Brodsky concerning a variety of potential risks involved in the administration of ECT, including whether increases in blood pressure during treatment could induce hemorrhages in the brain, whether treatment could rupture the blood/brain barrier, how the amount of electric current used is determined, the risks of the anesthesia used during the treatments, and whether the patient feels pain during the treatment.

Based on this record, the petitioner established by clear and convincing evidence that the appellant lacked the capacity to make a reasoned decision with respect to the proposed treatment and that the proposed treatment was narrowly tailored to give substantive effect to her liberty interest (see Rivers v Katz, 67 N.Y.2d 485, 497-498; Matter of Adam S., 285 A.D.2d 175, 178-179; Matter of Mausner v William E., 264 A.D.2d 485; Matter of Adele S. v Kingsboro Psychiatric Center, 149 A.D.2d 424, 424-425).

Contrary to our dissenting colleagues’ view, the Supreme [**5] Court did not improperly curtail the cross-examination of Dr. Brodsky. The nature and extent of cross-examination are matters within the trial court’s sound discretion (see People v Rodriguez, 2 AD3d 464; People v Ayala, 280 A.D.2d 552). Respectfully, the dissent focuses only on certain selectively chosen portions of the cross-examination. When the cross-examination is viewed as a whole and properly analyzed in context, it is clear that the appellant’s counsel was permitted extensive questioning on all relevant areas to be considered under Rivers v Katz (supra). Indeed, while the direct examination of Dr. Brodsky encompassed only 13 pages of the hearing transcript, the cross-examination covered 44 pages.

Moreover, the Supreme Court providently exercised its discretion in denying the appellant’s application for the appointment of an independent psychiatric expert. While a court “may” appoint an independent psychiatric expert (Judiciary Law ß 35[4]), here, an independent expert had already examined the appellant. Thus, the court’s determination that “another [expert] opinion would not be necessary” was entirely proper. [**6] [*3]

We disagree with our dissenting colleagues’ assertions that the court relied upon its own knowledge in reaching its determination. There is no indication in the record that the court based its decision on its own knowledge or became an unsworn witness. To the contrary, the court’s determination is amply supported by the medical evidence presented, including the evidence elicited by the appellant’s counsel during cross-examination.

The dissent’s statement that the appellant has been subjected to an “extensive course” of ECT without “long-range benefit” is incorrect. The benefits to the appellant herein are crystal clear. As Dr. Brodsky recognized, although the appellant may not achieve remission, the treatment has improved her quality of life. Namely, with the treatment, she will not remain in a fetal position, she will eat, interact, and not pose a danger to herself or others. These positive responses to ECT cannot be dismissed or ignored.

Accordingly, under the circumstances of this case, the Supreme Court properly authorized the administration of ECT.

RITTER, RIVERA and DILLON, JJ., concur.

DISSENT BY: STEPHEN G. CRANE

DISSENT: CRANE, J.P., dissents and votes to reverse [**7] the order and remit the matter to the Supreme Court, Queens County, for a hearing before a different Justice to consider the issues anew upon taking testimony and, if it deemed it appropriate, after assigning an independent expert to conduct a psychiatric examination and report relevant recommendations, with the following memorandum, in which GOLDSTEIN, J., concurs:

This is a proceeding pursuant to Rivers v Katz (67 N.Y.2d 485) to determine whether the respondent, Simone D., has the mental capacity to withhold her consent to electroconvulsive therapy (hereinafter ECT).

Simone D. was first admitted to Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in 1994 and suffers from a severe depressive disorder. Since 1995, she has undergone, over her objection but pursuant to previous court orders, at least 148 ECT treatments. Prior efforts to help her with medication failed to improve her condition. After two unsuccessful applications in July and September 2005 for permission to administer ECT to Simone D., the petitioner applied again in November 2005. The petition and supporting papers showed that without ECT Simone D. becomes depressed, stops eating and drinking, and requires nasogastric [**8] tube feeding. Allegedly, the ECT will diminish her assaultive behavior, enable her to eat, enhance self-care, and promote her ability to socialize.

At a hearing on the petition, the court rejected the request of Simone D.’s counsel that it appoint an independent psychiatrist. The petitioner called one of its psychiatrists, Dr. Ella Brodsky, who opined that Simone D. lacked the capacity to make a reasoned treatment decision and that ECT is the least restrictive alternative because there is no other choice.

Trying to undermine Dr. Brodsky’s opinion, Simone D.’s counsel cross-examined Dr. Brodsky extensively. Simone D. claimed that ECT inflicted pain on her. So, counsel tried to focus on the pain a patient undergoing ECT might suffer. On a prior petition that did not result in court-ordered ECT, Simone D. had been examined by an independent expert who suggested the alternative [*4] of psychotherapy with a Spanish-speaking therapist. This therapy was tried, but for only a few weeks. In an effort to show that this alternative to ECT deserved a longer testing period, Simone D.’s counsel attempted to cross-examine Dr. Brodsky on this subject. In addition, Simone D. had experienced [**9] cognitive impairment from ECT, resulting in its discontinuance in 1996. Her attorney, therefore, tried to cross-examine Dr. Brodsky on the extensive course of ECT administered to his client over the years without permanent improvement.

When Simone D.’s counsel tried to ask questions about the physical pain ECT causes, and also about grand mal seizure, the court interceded and proclaimed that it was familiar with the workings of ECT. When counsel sought to elicit information about hemorrhages and the rupture of the blood/brain barrier caused by ECT, the court sustained the petitioner’s objections. Likewise, the court thwarted counsel when he inquired about the dosage and duration of ECT, the Food and Drug Administration risk classification of ECT machines, and the identification of succinylcholine. These were but a few of the limitations the court placed on counsel as he attempted to show that Simone D. should not be forced yet again to undergo ECT.At the conclusion of Dr. Brodsky’s testimony, Simone D. renewed her application for an independent examination. The court denied the application as unnecessary. After closing arguments, the court found that it was in Simone D.’s best interest [**10] to administer ECT even though it acknowledged that she would probably never “get better”: “she perhaps could die. Perhaps she wants to die. But that’s not for us to determine. We must prevent her from dying.”

The court prevented Simone D. from making a record that could be reviewed on appeal and instead became a silent witness relying on its own knowledge of ECT. The appellant, therefore, was unable to demonstrate the side effects of ECT, the risks of this course of treatment, and the potential alternatives that may be available. This was error in the circumstances of this case, particularly because of the extensive course of ECT treatments to which Simone D. has been subjected since 1995 without long-range benefit.

The court’s reliance on its own knowledge was error in three respects. First, it violates the rule prohibiting a judge from considering, absent the parties’ consent, facts outside the record (see Silberman v Antar, 236 A.D.2d 385 [”(t)he court improperly gave great weight to its own knowledge, based on personal observation of certain facts”]; People v Weiss, 19 A.D.2d 900; People v Lawrence, 19 A.D.2d 899; People v Dow, 3 A.D.2d 979; [**11] Prince, Richardson on Evidence ß 2-205 [Farrell 11th ed]).

Second, the court became an unsworn witness whose “knowledge” of the “facts” and the basis those “facts” form for his conclusion was never scrutinized or tested by cross-examination (see e.g. People v Jie Mei Chen, 26 AD3d 344, 345; People v Dow, supra at 980).

Third, the details of the knowledge possessed by the court are not memorialized in the transcript, thus depriving all appellate courts of the ability to review the entire record and evaluate whether the petitioner has sustained its burden, in this case, by clear and convincing evidence (see Judiciary Law ß 295; People v Harrison, 85 N.Y.2d 794, 795-796; Rivers v Katz, supra at 498; People v Degondea, 256 A.D.2d 39, 41 [”defendant was effectively thwarted from creating an adequate record for appellate review”]; People v Robinson, 209 A.D.2d 648, 649). Put simply, there is no way to determine whether the petitioner met its burden because much of the evidence was [*5] contained only in the court’s mind. [**12]For these reasons, I respectfully dissent and would reverse the order and remit the matter to the Supreme Court, Queens County, for a hearing before a different Justice (see People v Jie Mei Chen, supra; People v Dow, supra) to consider the issues anew upon taking testimony and, if it deemed it appropriate, after assigning an independent expert to conduct a psychiatric examination and report relevant recommendations.

2 Responses »

Moved to remove this nonsense from the ect.org search engine

Moved here

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This site is not about VNSdepression. But VNSdepression is a hot topic and like all things, has its pros and cons. You might want to visit other websites for more information about VNSdepression.

And in the meantime, you can read one of the VNSdepression fans’ love comment to me. Warning: the post contains the C word. Not nice.

VNSdepression comment

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Mike Rupp and John Breeding will be the guests on The Power Hour radio show on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 10 am to noon Eastern Time (6-8am PST). The hosts have an interest in the issue as they were involved in ECT practice in their younger days.

The Power Hour is aired on the Genesis Communication Network and various local affiliates, including Austin Free Radio, 90.1, 100.1, and 106.3 FM depending on what part of town you are in. You can listen on your computer at http://www.thepowerhour.com

It would be great if some of you called in during the show. That number is 1-800-259-9231.

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September 19, 2006
New York Times
By JANE E. BRODY

For an older woman I know who was suffering from “implacable depression” that refused to yield to any medications, electroconvulsive therapy — popularly called shock therapy — was a lifesaver. And Kitty Dukakis, wife of the former governor of Massachusetts and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, says ECT, as doctors call it, gave her back her life, which had been rendered nearly unlivable by unrelenting despair and the alcohol she used to assuage it.Neither woman has experienced the most common side effect of ECT: memory disruption, though Mrs. Dukakis recalls nothing of a five-day trip to Paris she took after her treatment.

The television host Dick Cavett, who also had the treatment, wrote in People magazine, “In my case, ECT was miraculous.”

Mr. Cavett added, “It was like a magic wand.”

But for a man I know who was suicidally depressed and given ECT as a last resort, it did nothing to relieve his depression but destroyed some of his long-term memory.

Such differences in effectiveness and side effects are not unusual in medicine and psychiatry, and they are not played down in a new book called “Shock,” which Mrs. Dukakis wrote with Larry Tye, a former Boston Globe reporter. The book, in which Mrs. Dukakis details her experience with depression and ECT, explores the history, effectiveness and downsides of this nearly 70-year-old treatment, a remedy that has been repeatedly portrayed in film and literature as barbaric, inhuman, even torturous.

Few people seem to know that ECT has undergone significant changes in recent decades, placing it more in line with widely accepted treatments like those used to restart a stopped heart or to correct an abnormal heart rhythm. After a rather precipitous decline in the 1960’s when effective antidepressant drugs became available, ECT since the 1980’s has experienced something of a comeback, and is used primarily in these circumstances:

• When rapid reversal of a severe or suicidal depression is needed.

• When depression is complicated by psychosis or catatonia.

• When antidepressants and psychotherapy fail to alleviate a crippling depression.

• When antidepressants cannot safely be used, such as during pregnancy.

• When mania or bipolar disorder do not respond to drug therapy.

Though there is no official count, experts estimate that more than 100,000 patients undergo ECT each year in the United States.

ECT was developed in the 1930’s by an Italian neurologist, Ugo Cerletti, who “tamed” difficult mental patients with electric shocks to the brain after noting that such shocks given to hogs before slaughter rendered them unconscious but did not kill them. In its first decades of use, ECT was administered to fully conscious patients, causing them to lose consciousness and experience violent seizures and uncontrolled muscle movements that sometimes broke bones. It was sometimes used in patients without their consent, or at least without informed consent.

And while evidence for its effectiveness did not extend much beyond depression, for a time ECT was applied to patients with all kinds of emotional disturbances, including schizophrenia. It was also widely used in mental hospitals to punish or sedate difficult patients, as was graphically depicted by Jack Nicholson in the movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Some people may also recall that Ernest Hemingway, who suffered from life-long and often self-medicated depression, committed suicide in 1961 shortly after undergoing ECT. He had told his biographer: “Well, what is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient.”

A Modified Treatment

Though the impression of ECT left in the public mind by such films and writings persists, ECT today is a far more refined and limited therapy. Most important, perhaps, is the use of anesthesia and muscle relaxants before administering the shock, which causes a 30-second convulsion in the brain without the accompanying movements. Thus, there is no physical damage. The pretreatment also leaves no memory of the therapy itself.

The amount of current used today is lower and the pulse of electricity much shorter — about two seconds — reducing the risk of post-treatment confusion and memory disruption. While memory losses still occur in some patients, now the most serious risk associated with ECT is that of anesthesia.

Most patients require a series of six to eight treatments, delivered over several weeks. As my friend discovered, however, it is not universally effective. About three-fourths of patients are relieved of their debilitating symptoms at least temporarily. The remaining one-quarter are not helped, and some may be harmed.

Despite its long history, no one knows how ECT works to ease depression and mania. There is some evidence that it reorders the release of neurotransmitters, favoring an increase of substances like serotonin, which counters depression. Some experts view it as a pacemaker for the brain that disrupts negative circuitry.

The beauty of ECT is the speed with which it works. Antidepressants can take as long as six weeks to relieve serious depression. Mrs. Dukakis reported that she had begun to feel better after the first in an initial series of five outpatient ECT treatments given over a two-week period.

A Stopgap Measure

But — and this is a big but — ECT is not a cure for depression. It is more like a stopgap measure that brings patients to a point where other approaches, including antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy, can work to stave off relapses. Although some ECT patients never relapse, most are like Mrs. Dukakis, who over the course of four years has come back for seven more rounds of ECT. She explained that while she used to deny the early signs of a recurring depression, she now calls her doctor “as soon as I spot the gathering clouds.”

“ECT has wiped away that foreboding,” she wrote, and “given me a sense of control, of hope.” It has also helped her get off antidepressants, which had side effects like bowel, sexual and sleep disturbances and an inability to experience “the full range of my feelings.”

ECT should not be administered without the patient’s (or the patient’s surrogate’s) fully informed consent, which includes consideration of all possible side effects. The most common side effects are headache, muscle soreness and confusion shortly after the procedure, as well as short-term memory loss, which usually improves over a period of days to months.

But according to the American Psychiatric Association, there is no evidence that ECT causes brain damage. Abuse of the procedure has declined strikingly. Today fewer than 2 percent of patients hospitalized in psychiatric facilities in New York State receive ECT. Properly used, it can be lifesaving.

Though there is not nearly the money to be made from ECT that there is in selling antidepressants, work on improvements continues. Modern ECT is sometimes delivered to only one side of the brain, reducing the chances of memory deficits.

Another new approach uses a magnetically induced current that can be aimed at specific regions of the brain, possibly altering them permanently. An advantage of this treatment, however, is that it does not require the use of anesthesia.

3 Responses »

MindFreedom.org
MindFreedom Weekly News Hour - Live Free Internet Radio.

Next guest: Psychiatric survivor hero Ted Chabasinski

When: *This* Tuesday, 19 September 2006, at 1 pm eastern time, 10 am pacific time.

How: Click on http://www.theprn.org to listen live or to hear the archive later.

What: Topic = “From forced electroshock as a child to human rights activist leader.”

You will hear psychiatric survivor activist Ted Chabasinski of California as a guest on the MindFreedom Weekly News Hour Internet radio show. Ted is a true hero in the social change movement to change the mental health system. He will be interviewed by host David Oaks on the live free show which is part of the Progressive Radio Network.

You’ll also hear the latest news and resources to win human rights and alternatives in the mental health system.

You may e-mail your questions and comments before, during or after the show to radio@mindfreedom.org. Your questions and comments may be read live during the show. Please say if you wish to be anonymous.

~~~~~~~~~~

TED CHABASINSKI was once given electroshock treatment as part of an experiment at age six, then sent to a New York State psychiatric institution where he spent the rest of his childhood. Now an attorney in Berkeley, California, he has been well-respected leader in the psychiatric survivors movement since 1971. Ted was the main organizer of the 1982 ballot campaign to ban shock treatment in Berkeley, California, which was passed overwhelmingly by the voters there. Ted is on the board of MindFreedom International.

The interview will cover:

* How did Ted survive years of psychiatric institutionalization and electroshock experimentation?

* What are stories and highlights from 35 years of organizing in the psychiatric survivors social change movement?

* How can people effectively organize today to challenge psychiatric abuse and promote alternatives?

* What direction would Ted like to see the movement to change the mental health system head?

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Her battle with depression is well known, but in her new book, Shock, Kitty Dukakis, with help from award-winning medical journalist Larry Tye, shares how controversial shock therapy treatments may have saved her life.

September 17, 2006
Boston Globe

It is June 20, 2001, Michael’s and my 38th wedding anniversary. It also is the end of my fourth month of depression, my crisis period. I’m normally a person with enormous enthusiasm for and interest in the world. All that is just missing now. Fun or enjoyment are things I cannot even imagine. I don’t speak to my kids on the phone, or to my sister. I do keep up with Dad, but he calls me more than I do him. The last two people I want worrying about me are my father, who is too old and dear, and my husband, who has had to worry for far too long. I have run out of options and I don’t want to drink.

These are the times when I am most vulnerable. Having a drink is the only way of bringing me away from the horrendous feelings I am having about myself. It starts out as a glass or two of wine. It generally ends up with vodka. The alcohol is like an amnesiac, it is able to take me away from the darkness. Last night I was so afraid I was going to drink that I had them check me in here at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Today I am going to try the only thing left: electro-convulsive therapy.

Michael and I have reason to be anxious. His older brother, Stelian Panos Dukakis, had ECT back in 1951, in what I think of as the treatment’s Dark Ages. Stelian had had a mental breakdown. One day he tossed a pile of sleeping pills in his mouth. They gave him ECT along with insulin coma treatments, which was a combination they often used at the time. Stelian never really was the same person. He had a zombielike look that melted the heart of everyone who knew and loved him.

Neither Michael nor I knew they still were doing electroconvulsive therapy before my doctors showed us a video on it three years ago and explained how the treatment had been transformed. We knew that if the time came again when we were desperate for a solution - some kind of positive action - we would try it. That time is now. Yesterday they admitted me to the hospital under the name Jane Dee, a pseudonym they use as a courtesy to protect my privacy after my 12 years as first lady of Massachusetts and Michael’s long campaign for president in 1988. Today, as I lie here waiting for my treatment, the image of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest flashes through my mind. Getting ECT will make me a full-fl edged member of the mental health family. What am I doing?

I am the first patient of the morning. No one else is around. They clip to my finger a device that measures the oxygen in my blood. They stick a bunch of electrical leads on my legs, arms, and over my heart. The anesthesiologist comes over and says, “I’m going to give you a shot of sodium pentothal. You’ll be asleep within seconds.” I am lying down. He says to think of something bright and cheerful. I think about Michael and our anniversary.

It was the medical madness of an earlier era, a remedy forever equated with thrashing limbs and obliterated memories.

Now, at the same Harvard teaching hospital that Kitty Dukakis gets her treatment, 20 patients a week volunteer for shock therapy. All are tormented by depression too deep to defy or another disabling disease of the mind, and all, like Kitty, are counting on 20 volts of electricity to jolt their brains back into equilibrium. Muscle relaxant ensures that the only signal of their seizure will be a twitch of the toe; anesthesia guarantees they will not remember that paralysis or anything else leading to the convulsion. Scores more line up for similar sessions at two dozen other hospitals across the state. Even at nearby McLean, one of America’s most exalted citadels of psychiatry, 50 patients a week are transfused with enough current to kindle a 60-watt bulb and, if the procedure is true to its well-established form, vanquish the demons of the moment.

In Massachusetts as in the rest of the nation the evidence is unmistakable: ECT is back.

A procedure pioneered in the 1930s that seemed on the edge of extinction just a generation ago is being performed today at medical centers large and small, on patients staying in the hospital and on a growing number who simply show up an hour before treatment and leave an hour after. More than 100,000 Americans a year get ECT for ailments ranging from mania to catatonia, with 10 to 20 times that many worldwide. Electroconvulsive therapy is now as ordinary as hysterectomy and twice as common as knee replacement surgery. And it all is happening just enough out of sight that it has taken many medical professionals by surprise. Madness no more, electric shock is quietly being resurrected as a restorative wonder that someday could rank right up there with penicillin and Prozac.

How one of the most reviled psychiatric procedures is fast becoming one of its mainstays is an astounding yet untold chapter of American medical history. It is a narrative that begins with an epidemic of mental illness that has stubbornly resisted a cure, and a handful of doctors who have equally stubbornly refused to give up on a remedy that most had banished as barbaric. Researchers still have not filled in the puzzle of how or why ECT provides relief, although the proof is compelling that it does, faster and more surely than drugs or talk therapy. Questions also remain about the price that shock patients pay in memories lost, in rare cases permanently, and whether such risks can be minimized or eliminated entirely. The rise, fall, and rise again of ECT thus remains an epic without an ending, as practitioners and potential patients alike wait to see if hopes for success are sustained and it can come back all the way.

Barbara Collins-Layton could not wait. Like millions of Americans, the retired banker suffers serious depression, and has since childhood. Her bathroom vanity was beginning to look like pharmacy, stocked with Risperdal, Zyprexa, Lamictal, and other psychotropic drugs that once worked but did no longer. Her desk was cluttered with crumpled bills from therapists. It had gotten to where she would wake in the morning and make a beeline for the living room and her rocking chair. Forward and back. All day long for six long weeks. While she rocked, her 3-year-old adopted son whispered: “Did I make mommy sick?” Collins-Layton finally went to her psychiatrist and pleaded, “I can’t do this any longer. I can’t live in this state of mind.” He suggested ECT.

Looking back six years later, Collins-Layton, now 56, realizes how radical a treatment ECT is. Was I afraid to get electricity to my brain?” she asks. “Hell, yes!” She knows there are questions still unanswered, like whether her lost memories will return. “But it made me function again,” Collins-Layton explains from her home in Portage, Indiana. “You don’t function sitting in a rocking chair. I didn’t shower. I couldn’t cook. couldn’t take care of my family. It takes a while with ECT. I had like six treatments. But when I came home from the hospital I was functioning again. ECT gave me my life back.”

Next thing I know I am waking up. I am back on an upper floor of Mass. General, in the unit where I slept last night. I feel lightheaded, groggy, the way you do when anesthesia is wearing off . I vaguely recall the anesthesiologist having had me count to 10, but I never got beyond three or four. I remember Dr. Charlie Welch and his ECT team but am not sure whether not I got the treatment. One clue is a slight headache. Another is the goo on my hair, where they must have attached the electrodes.

There is one more sign that I did in fact have my first session of seizure therapy: I feel good - I feel alive.

Michael is standing there as I struggle to keep my eyes open, and I give him a big grin. That surprises him right away. After a bit more dozing I am awake for good, and get dressed. Michael takes me to the car. I have been warned not to expect too much from any single ECT treatment, especially my first. But I already can detect difference. Feeling this good is truly amazing given where I am coming from, which is a very dark place that has lasted a very long time. As we head home to Brookline, I remember that it is our anniversary. I turn Michael and say, “Let’s go out for dinner tonight!” asks, “What?” I say, “I’m serious. Let’s do it!”

Michael and I did eat out at a restaurant that night, remaking an anniversary I wanted to forget into one I will remember always. I was back at the hospital on an outpatient basis the next two weeks for four more treatments. After the second one I went to the hairdresser, then a dinner party, and watched the Red Sox on TV.

Love it or hate it. That is the way things have been with ECT since the 1960s. There are two camps, at war. One labels the treatment the best in psychiatry and says it is vastly underused. The other brands it brain-damaging and insists it be banned. Both argue their positions with a righteousness and pertinacity reminiscent of third rail issues like abortion and evolution. Both say it is their way or no way.

Now comes Anne Donahue and her middle way. The Republican lawmaker from Vermont entered the world of ECT a decade ago, when she came home for a breather from overseeing programs for runaway kids in New York and Los Angeles. She started teaching, and playing a game during her commutes on the interstate: “I dared myself how long I could close my eyes before panicking and opening them. It was not a direct attempt at suicide, but I wanted to have a terrible car accident so I would be taken care of. People would realize how desperately I needed help.”

She confided in a friend, who convinced her to go to the hospital. That led to a series of hospitalizations and medication trials to treat the depression she had been suffering since the mid-1980s. When they failed, her doctors convinced her to try ECT. She got 33 treatments in all in 1995 and 1996.

Her ECT was a triumph and a miscarriage. The treatment was able “to break the stranglehold of a seemingly intractable and severe depression.” It saved her mental health and her very life. But it sliced into the life she had lived starting a full six years before her ECT. Memories from the year before treatment have not come back at all, those from two to four years before are hit-and-miss. Donahue is philosophical about the trade-off, comparing herself to a “cancer victim who must choose the horrible side effects of chemotherapy over certain death to the disease.”

Most ex-patients would stop there, focusing on their personal recoveries. Holding things in is not Donahue’s way. So she pressed hospitals and state regulators in Vermont to agree to one of America’s strictest informed-consent requirements for ECT. She filed a malpractice suit against the teaching hospital in New Hampshire where she got her treatment, agreeing to a settlement under which it adopted Vermont’s consent form and created a more candid video for prospective patients. She ended up as a reviewer of the American Psychiatric Association’s latest book on ECT, and in 2002 was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives.

In the process, she has become a pariah. ECT critics cannot stomach the good things she says about the therapy, including that she would have it again. Boosters are at least as disdainful, suggesting that because her memory loss is worse than most, she must be imagining it. The truth is that the Vermont legislator represents a substantial minority of ECT patients who applaud what the treatment did for them but bemoan what it did to them. Even those who cheerlead for ECT generally have some complications to report, just as many who are bitterly opposed acknowledge that ECT did some good for them or someone they know.

It is not just patients who are eager to find middle ground in the ECT debate, but a growing number of psychiatrists. They know that ECT is one of their profession’s most effective remedies but also know that too many patients suffer side effects. They are adjusting techniques in ways that demonstrably minimize those losses, in the process doing battle with fellow doctors who insist that attempts to lessen its impact on memory will lessen its impact on disease.

Donahue is working with those patients and doctors to carve out a compromise, one that reforms the treatment rather than sees the status quo as immutable or seeks to ban it. “I was being told from all the research that my experience of loss doesn’t exist. Yet I know without question what happened to me,” she explains. “I also was discovering this opposite view that said, ‘This deliberate and knowing fraud on innocent psychiatric patients who are having their brains destroyed by the evil kingdom.’ I am not the kind of person who can believe that, either. I don’t believe in massive conspiracies.”

It is not an exaggeration to say that electroconvulsive therapy has opened a new reality for me. I used to deny when a depressive episode was coming on. knew how much it would hurt, how long the darkness would last. Now I know there is something that will work and work quickly. It takes away the anticipation and the fear. I also used to be unable to shake the dread even when I was feeling good, because I knew the bad feelings would return. ECT has wiped away that foreboding. It has given me a sense of control, of hope.

That does not mean I look forward to the treatments. Who would? But when I lie down, I know that within seconds I’ll be asleep - and that this process going to make me better. I also know that like many patients today, I can go home after each treatment rather than stay overnight in the hospital.

I have had seven more sets of ECT since the first in 2001. All my treatments have been unilateral, which means the electrodes go on just one side of my head in positions aimed at minimizing memory loss. The same concern led them to gradually lower the intensity of the stimulus they give me, to a level the doctors say one-10th of what Stelian Dukakis probably got in the 1950s. I generally need treatment every seven or eight months, my timeline for depression returning.

A nun who contacted me after a story on my ECT appeared in the newspaper described how afraid she had been to have ECT. She said, “This is the way would feel going in for a root canal.” As for me, I hate fillings, and don’t like to go to the dentist, period. I happened to have had a root canal not long before my first electroconvulsive therapy. In some ways ECT is less traumatic for me than going to the dentist, and certainly less frightening than the root canal. Lots of doctors say I am crazy for thinking something like that, but I don’t think negatively about the treatment.

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Apparently the Pope has gone mentally ill due to his recent call for peace.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/013138.php 

So far, no indications that he might be forcibly shocked, though there have been calls for him to be forcibly shot.

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Full report, released September 15, 2006
http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/m-news+article+storyid-16220.html

Excerpts:

In December 2005 a Beijing attorney sent an open letter to President Hu Jintao highlighting abuses of Falun Gong practitioners. The letter described the electric shock torture of Zhang Zhikui, a Falun Gong practitioner arrested for repeated petitioning in Beijing, and the October beating death in Changchun, Jilin Province of Liu Boyang and his mother Wang Shouhui. The letter, and a similar open letter sent by the attorney in 2004, referred to the extra-legal activities of the 610 office, reportedly involved in many of the abuses of Falun Gong. In 2005 the Government revoked the attorney’s license to practice law, and the attorney has claimed repeated government harassment, including an automobile accident that he publicly described as an “assassination attempt.” Foreigners attempting to meet with the attorney have been detained and harassed.

According to Falun Gong practitioners in the United States, since 1999 more than 100,000 practitioners have been detained for engaging in Falun Gong practices, admitting that they adhere to the teachings of Falun Gong, or refusing to criticize the organization or its founder. The organization reported that its members have been subject to excessive force, abuse, rape, detention, and torture, and that some of its members, including children, have died in custody. NGOs not affiliated with the Falun Gong documented nearly 500 cases of Falun Gong members detained, prosecuted, or sentenced to reeducation during the period covered by this report. Credible estimates suggested the actual number was much higher. In November 2005 police at the Dongchengfang Police Station in Tunzhou City, Hebei Province, reportedly raped two Falun Gong practitioners. Reliable sources indicated that Zheng Ruihuan and Liu Yinglan were detained in Shandong Province in July 2005 for practicing Falun Gong. In May 2006, Yuan Yuju and Liang Jinhui, relatives of a Hong Kong journalist who works for a television station supportive of Falun Gong, were sentenced to reeducation for using an illegal cult to organize and obstruct justice, relating to their distribution of Falun Gong materials. Some foreign observers estimated that at least half of the 250,000 officially recorded inmates in the country’s reeducation-through-labor camps were Falun Gong adherents. Falun Gong sources overseas placed the number even higher. Hundreds of Falun Gong adherents were also incarcerated in legal education centers, a form of administrative detention, upon completion of their reeducation-through-labor sentences. Government officials denied the existence of such “legal education” centers. According to the Falun Gong, hundreds of its practitioners have been confined to psychiatric institutions and forced to take medications or undergo electric shock treatment against their will.

More from the US State Department on Falun Gong:
http://tinyurl.com/mg6l6

Bobby Fletcher’s info on China: he believes much of the above is a hoax and is concerned it will divert attention from “real” human rights issues in China:

http://sujiatunfactorhoax.blogspot.com/

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IN THE NAME OF MENTAL HEALTH - PSYCHIATRYS HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
Note: Psychiatric survivors and supporters handed out many copies of this
leaflet on the street outside the Convention Centre in Toronto where the
American Psychiatric Association held its annual meeting in May 2006.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is holding its Annual Meeting in
Toronto on May 20-25, 2006. On May 26-27, a “Conference on Ethics in Mental
Health:” endorsed by the APA, is also being held Toronto. Since psychiatric
survivors have not been invited to speak at these conferences–with 1
exception of an unnamed “client” at the mental health conference–we feel
it’s appropriate to distribute this document as our contribution to public
education about many human rights violations in the psychiatry-dominated
“mental health system”. This is a short list of many of psychiatry’s
unethical practices or human rights violations minimized or denied by the
APA, the Canadian Psychiatric Association, and World Psychiatric
Association.

1. NO INFORMED CONSENT
The right to voluntary informed consent is enshrined in virtually all
mental health laws, it’s a key principle of medical ethics. This right
means that when prescribing any treatment or procedure, the physician must,
a., not use any pressure, threat or coercion to obtain consent; b., tell
you the nature of your condition or illness; c., inform you of the
immediate risks and other common risks of the treatment (”side effects”);
d., inform you of alternatives to the treatment; and e., inform you of your
right to refuse. Psychiatrists frequently violate this right - especially
when prescribing psychiatric drugs (”medication”) and electroshock (”ECT”).

2. FORCED DRUGGING
Psychiatrists frequently administer brain-disabling antidepressants and
neuroleptics and addictive tranquilizers (”medication”) without informed
consent of their patients. This is unlawful. Forced drugging is assault. In
fact, any “unwanted touching” constitutes assault in many criminal codes
including the Criminal Code of Canada. Many psychiatric survivors have been
traumatized and disabled (sometimes permanently) by forced drugging (e.g.
injections). Many more women than men are drugged; women diagnosed as
depressed, “bipolar” or suffering “postpartum depression” are the main
targets of this psychiatric assault.

3. ELECTROSHOCK ( “electroconvulsive therapy”/ECT”)
As one of the most disabling and inhumane procedures in psychiatry,
electroshock is increasingly used in several countries including Canada,
United States, and the UK. ECT’s immediate effects include seizure,
convulsion, coma, severe headache, disorientation, nausea, and physical
weakness. Its long-term effects include permanent memory loss, learning and
reading disabilities, impaired concentration, and brain damage. “ECT”
consent forms are a sham, since patients are misinformed or not informed of
most of these serious health risks. Women and the elderly, especially
elderly women, are the main targets. Electroshock is state-sanctioned
violence against women. Anti-shock campaigns advocating abolition are
growing in the United States (Texas, California), the United Kingdom, and
New Zealand. “ECT” should be universally and immediately banned

4. INVOLUNTARY COMMITTAL IS PREVENTIVE DETENTION
Involuntary committal is the psychiatric imprisonment of people labeled and
believed to be “mentally ill”, dangerous to themselves or others, and/or
“incapable”. Locking up citizens on the belief or opinion they might commit
a violent act or criminal offence - without being charged and denied a
trial - is preventive detention, which is prohibited in international law.
Many involuntary patients are poor or homeless, with little or no community
support. Although involuntary committal violates several rights in the
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (sections 7, 9,15), it is legal in
all provinces, all states in the United States and many European countries.

5. COMMUNITY TREATMENT ORDERS/OUTPATIENT FORCED DRUGGING -Under these
“leash laws”, psychiatrists have the power to force psychiatric patients to
be treated in the community - the treatment is usually powerful,
brain-damaging antidepressants and/or neuroleptics. If patients refuse to
obey community treatment orders (CTOs) or “take their meds” (sometimes
ordered by judges in the United States), they can be locked up again for
longer periods or indefinitely.  These psychiatric orders are enforced by
community treatment teams of mental health professionals. In Ontario,
patient appeals are rarely successful; CTOs may soon be challenged as
Charter violations.

6. CHILD ABUSE -
Child psychiatrists frequently prescribe health-threatening antidepressants
and neuroleptics to young children (some as young as 2 or 3 years old) as a
treatment for “behavior disorder” or “mental illness”. Some researchers
have used children as guinea pigs in hi-risk drug experiments.  In Canada
and the United States, hundreds of thousands of children have been
fraudulently diagnosed with the label attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD) or oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and prescribed
highly addictive stimulants like Ritalin.
The United States government’s national “teen screening” program targets
and tests youth suspected of being “mentally ill”. A similar program is
recommended in the current mental health report of the Canadian Senate
(”Out of the Shadows - Highlights and Recommendations”, 2006, p.19)

7. TORTURE: PHYSICAL RESTRAINTS/”SECLUSION”
Adults and children labeled “non-compliant” or “unmanageable” are
frequently subjected to 2-point, 4-point and sometimes 5-point restraints
ordered by psychiatrists. 2-pointx restraints involve tying both wrists or
ankles; 4-point restraints involve tying both wrists and ankles; 5-point
restraints consist of tying the person’s wrists, ankles and waist -  very
similar to the shackles inflicted on prisoners in maximum security prisons.
Hundreds of patients have been seriously traumatized or died while
restrained (see “Deadly Restraint” series in The Hartford Courant).  Many
have also languished in “seclusion”, a form of solitary confinement.
“Seclusion rooms” exist on virtually all psychiatric wards and hospitals.
Patients experience restraints and seclusion as cruel and degrading
punishment or torture. Physically and chemically restraining children is
child abuse - a serious violation of the UN Convention Against Torture and
the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In April 2005, the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault (CAPA), sponsored
four days of public hearings on the effects of psychiatric drugs and
electroshock Approximately 40 psychiatric survivors courageously testified
about many of these rights abuses and violations they personally
experienced. (see “Inquiry Into Psychiatry”: -
http://capa.oise.utoronto.ca).

We demand that governments immediately call public hearings into these
psychiatric abuses - human rights violations the American Psychiatric
Association and Canadian Psychiatric Association minimize or deny - in the
name of “mental health”.

Prepared by the OCAP Accessibility Committee
Toronto, May 20, 2006

Endorsed by the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault
(CAPA), Mindfreedom International, Common Front Legal Collective,
Psychiatric Survivors and Allies

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Worcester News
Sept. 14, 2006

MENTAL health care patients in Worcestershire are given nearly 700 electric shock treatments a year, new figures have revealed.

According to the statistics, the controversial electroconvulsive therapy has been administered 3,400 times in Worcestershire since 2001 - more than any of the 27 health trusts nationwide that have provided figures apart from Leicestershire.

The therapy involves electrodes being attached to the head and an electric current being passed briefly though the electrodes to the brain, causing a seizure.

Surveys by the medical profession have highlighted serious long-term side-effects of the treatment - including brain damage, memory loss and intellectual impairment, while human rights campaigners have branded it “cruel and barbaric” and say it should only be given as a last resort.

But mental health care bosses say the figure equates to just 125 patients treated per year from a Worcestershire population of half a million.

The figures were obtained from the Worcestershire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust by the Citizens Commission On Human Rights (CCHR) under the Freedom Of Information Act. Commission spokesman Chris Wrapson described them as “extraordinary”.

He said: “Psychiatrists cloak shock treatment in medical legitimacy, the effects of which are horrific, and the full ramifications are not explained to the patients or families, The brutality of ECT shows psychiatry has not advanced beyond the cruelty and barbarism of its earliest treatment.”

A survey by the Royal College of Psychiatrists proved patients treated with electric shock therapy can suffer memory loss as a result.

Of the 1,344 psychiatrists surveyed, 21 per cent referred to long-term side from page one effects and risks of brain damage, memory loss and intellectual impairment.

GPs reported that 34 per cent of patients seen in the months after receiving electroconvulsive therapy were poor or worse.

But a spokesman for Worcestershire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust said: “The figure quoted by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of 3,400 relates to approximately 680 administrations per year.

“Most administrations would have been given in batches of six per course of treatment, therefore, the figures relate to approximately 125 people being treated per year from a population of 542,107 in 2001 and a population of 555,832 in 2005.

“Each community mental health team has a caseload of 300 to 500 people at any time. Across the whole county that would be a figure in excess of 10,000 people being seen during that year, therefore, this equates to approximately one per cent or less of the people being treated.”

She added that the trust ensures that the therapy is carried out in accordance with the National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidance.

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