ect.org

ect.org note: This article is appearing in numerous publications and websites, so to avoid repeating the same information again and again, an ongoing list of publications will be posted below.

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Forbes
Electroconvulsive Therapy Causes Permanent Amnesia and Cognitive Deficits, Prominent Researcher Admits
12.21.06, 3:38 PM ET

NEW YORK, Dec. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — In a stunning reversal, an article in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology in January 2007 by prominent researcher Harold Sackeim of Columbia University reveals that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) causes permanent amnesia and permanent deficits in cognitive abilities, which affect individuals’ ability to function.

“[T]his study provides the first evidence in a large, prospective sample that adverse cognitive effects can persist for an extended period, and that they characterize routine treatment with ECT in community settings,” the study notes.

For the past 25 years, ECT patients were told by Sackeim, the nation’s top ECT researcher, that the controversial treatment doesn’t cause permanent amnesia and, in fact, improves memory and increases intelligence. Psychologist Sackeim also taught a generation of ECT practitioners that permanent amnesia from ECT is so rare that it could not be studied. He asserted that most people who said the treatment erased years of memory were mentally ill and thus not credible.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) estimates that more than 3 million people have received ECT over the past generation. “Those patients who reported permanent adverse effects on cognition have now had their experiences validated,” said Linda Andre, head of the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry, a national organization of ECT recipients.

Since the mid-1980s, Sackeim worked as a consultant to the ECT device manufacturer Mecta Corp. He never revealed his financial interest in ECT to NIMH, as required by federal law, and, until 2002, did not reveal it to New York officials as required by state law. Neuropsychopharmacology has endured negative publicity over its failure to disclose financial conflicts of journal authors, resulting in the editor’s resignation and a promise to disclose such conflicts in the future; yet there is no disclosure of Sackeim’s long-term relationship with Mecta, nor did Sackeim disclose his financial conflict when his NIMH grant was renewed to 2009 at approximately $500,000 per year.

The six-month study followed about 250 patients in New York City hospitals, an unusually large number; most ECT studies are based on 20 to 30 patients. Sackeim’s previously published studies were short term, making it impossible to assess long-term effects. “However, in other contexts over the years — court depositions, communications with mental health officials, and grant protocols — Sackeim has claimed to follow up patients for as long as five years. This raises serious questions as to how long he has actually known of the existence and prevalence of permanent amnesia and why it wasn’t revealed until now,” Andre said.

Besides finding that ECT routinely causes substantial and permanent amnesia, the study contradicts Sackeim’s oft-published statements that ECT increases intelligence and that patients who report permanent adverse effects are mentally ill.

“The study is a stunning self-repudiation of a 25-year career,” Andre said.

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Other publications that have picked up the story:

Dec 22 2006:

Forbes
Medical News Today
Brietbart
Dallas News
Kron.com
MedicalDevices.org
TXCN.com - Healthcare & Hospitals
WFAA
Philadelphia Weekly
Genetic Engineering News
Pharma-Lexicon

54 Responses »

By Graham Keeley in Barcelona
28 December 2006
The Independent

In the dying days of General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, Antoni Ruiz found out for himself what thousands of others had already suffered for being gay.

Antoni, then just 17, from Valencia, eastern Spain, told his mother he was homosexual and his family sought advice from a nun. “She went straight to the police and I was arrested and sent for trial,” said Mr Ruiz.

“I spent three months in prison. I was raped there and in the police cells and psychologically tortured by both the guards and the prison doctor.”

Now, 31 years later, Mr Ruiz and a dwindling band of others who suffered General Franco’s ruthless repression of homosexuals, may finally be offered compensation by the state.

The Spanish government may offer money to those who were sent to mental hospitals, tortured, imprisoned or who suffered a lifetime of persecution. The Spanish Justice Minister, Juan Fernando López Aguilar, is considering granting victims a pension of €800 (£540) a month, plus a one-off €12,000 payment for what they suffered under the regime. It could be introduced in two months.

Many homosexuals were prevented from working under the Franco dictatorship because of their “criminal” records, meaning they never contributed enough money to receive more than the minimum pension.

Mr Ruiz, president of the Association of Ex-Social Prisoners, said the move would be a victory. “This is not just about economic compensation but remembering homosexuals who suffered under unjust and dictatorial laws,” he added. A few hundred survivors will see the payments - many of the thousands victimised have since died.

During Franco’s homophobic dictatorship, gays were jailed or locked up in sinister mental institutions known as “correction camps”. With echoes of the Nazi atrocities against gays, they were given electric shocks in the belief that this would rid them of their homosexual urges. Inmates were forced to watch pornographic films featuring women in an effort to show them a sex life that was deemed “natural” by the conservative authorities.

As part of their nationalist, Catholic ideals, the Franco regime and its Falangist supporters considered homosexuals a threat to the “macho” Spanish male.

General Queipo del Llano, who broadcast to the nation, once said: “Any effeminate or introvert who insults the movement will be killed like a dog.”

The most famous gay man killed by the regime was the poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, who wrote Blood Wedding and The House of Bernarda Alba. Considered a subversive, he was executed by a Nationalist firing squad in Granada in 1936.

Homosexuality was designated as an offence under the “law against delinquency and criminals” introduced in 1954. But towards the end of Franco’s regime, it was increasingly viewed as an illness rather than a crime. In 1968, the psychologist Lopez Ibor said: “Homosexuals should be seen more as sick people than as criminals. But the law should still prevent them proselytising in schools, sports clubs and army barracks.” Jail terms of up to three years were imposed under laws covering “public scandal” or “social danger”.

Homosexuals, almost all of them men, were packed off to mental hospitals, where some were given electric-shock therapy.

Lower middle class or working-class gays without powerful friends in the regime to protect them were the main victims. For others, the situation was different. The historian Pablo Fuentes said: “It is not uncommon to hear homosexuals from the upper classes and the aristocracy speak about the Franco period as a great time.”

Many gay people who suffered at the hands of the regime are reluctant to raise the issue because of the horrors it brings back or because they still fear society’s attitudes.

Even after Franco died, persecution of gays continued. They could be jailed until 1979. And although thousands of political and other prisoners were pardoned in 1976, gay people were made to serve their sentences. In 2001, Spain finally pledged to wipe clean the criminal records of gays convicted under Franco.

The present Socialist government legalised same-sex weddings and gay adoption in 2005, against opposition from the conservative opposition and the Roman Catholic Church.

Pedro Zerolo, president of Spain’s Federation of Gays and Lesbians, said: “What we want is a declaration of moral rehabilitation for those people who had part of their lives stolen by the state.”

No Responses »

San Francisco Chronicle

Dec 24 2006

Telling a friend I was starting Kitty Dukakis’ new book sparked a disagreement. Was it rubbing alcohol she used to drink? Or vanilla extract? A happy debate: We were both right.

One might be tempted to say Dukakis self-medicated by treating her storied long-term depression with booze and pills. But she had plenty of help from some of the country’s leading doctors, who enabled decades of her addiction to amphetamines.

Dukakis’ book, “Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy,” alternates what folks in Alcoholics Anonymous call a “drunk-a-logue” — Dukakis’ finely honed tale of a life punctuated by overdoses, blackouts and trips to treatment centers — with journalist Larry Tye’s history of electroconvulsive therapy, “psychiatry’s most controversial treatment.”

The Dukakis shining through these struggles with depression is warm, funny, vulnerable and considerably more engaging than her uptight husband of 43 years, former Massachusetts governor and 1988 presidential contender Michael Dukakis. Her description of unraveling under the media klieg lights is downright courageous.

Let’s face it, when celebrities get together to divvy up diseases, neither mental illness nor alcoholism often gets a taker. Appreciating the depths of Dukakis’ despair is the key to understanding why she would seek out the treatment that became her salvation and even promote it, even though it stole significant slices of her memory.

“Electroconvulsive therapy has opened a new reality for me. … It has given me a sense of control, of hope,” she writes.

Shock’s authors are on a mission to rescue this therapy from stigma that haunts it to this day, even as psychiatry has embraced it as a mainstream therapy and some 100,000 patients are said to undergo it each year in the United States.

It was an Italian neurologist, Ugo Cerletti, who determined that electric shocks could be used to “tame” mental patients by causing convulsions. Cerletti first determined the amount of electricity needed to induce a seizure, but not kill, a pig or a dog in a series of experiments that would give a PETA member a lifetime of nightmares.

He first made the leap to a human in 1938 when he administered 110 volts to a 39-year-old man who had been found wandering a train station in Milan, muttering incomprehensibly.

In the early decades of the therapy’s use, electrical shocks were administered to fully conscious patients. They lost consciousness, experiencing seizures and muscle spasms so violent as to routinely break bones. Confusion and memory loss was a common side effect.

To understand how such a brutal treatment gained sway in the 1940s and ’50s, it is worth noting that competing treatments included lobotomy, as well as other means intended to induce shock or coma as a therapy, such as insulin or the drug Metrazol.

But there was arrogance and sloppiness in its use, too. Doctors tried electroshock therapy on patients as young as 2 and as old as 102, seldom following them adequately or conducting proper clinical research, making it difficult to sort out the long-term impacts. Treatment was often given over patients’ objections or with scant attention to informed consent. The therapy became popular for treating schizophrenia, although, under more rigorous scrutiny, it was later determined not to be helpful.

Some doctors shocked with abandon, resorting to electroshock therapy for indications as questionable and slippery as “antisocial behavior,” “maladjustment” and homosexuality.

The use of shock for punishment rather than therapy also undermined its future.

Such was the case for the therapy’s most famous patient, albeit a fictional one. Randall Patrick McMurphy was the bete noir of Nurse Ratched in Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The gruesome electroshock McMurphy received in “Cuckoo’s Nest” left the impression that he had been shocked into submission, but it was actually a lobotomy that reduced him to the catatonia seen at the movie’s end.

For Dukakis and Tye, that was your grandfather’s electroshock therapy. They say today’s version is neither an abomination nor a “Clockwork Orange” instrument of social control, but rather an invaluable treatment all too often denied to poor people and people of color.

Today, electroshock therapy is reserved for a more discreet set of circumstances. Depression is the most common indication, especially where antidepressant drugs and psychotherapy have failed and when suicide is a risk or psychosis and catatonia are complicating factors. Now, shocks are briefer; administering them on only one side of the brain is thought to spare memory. The patients receive anesthesia and muscle relaxants, and don’t remember undergoing what is a much calmer looking procedure.

Of course, one might wonder why a book seeking to destigmatize the practice is entitled “Shock” when modern practitioners prefer the “electroconvulsive therapy” of the subtitle.

“We debated it. Ultimately we decided it is the term most people recognize and understand. It might help sell the book and reach people in need. Sometimes embracing a stigmatized term is a way of deflating it,” said Tye in a recent phone interview.

“Shock” chronicles how the Bay Area was the crucible for much of the political debate over electroconvulsive therapy, profiling some of its harshest foes, Ted Chabasinski and Leonard Frank. They remain implacable critics of the procedure, even in its modern guise, maintaining that psychiatrists still understate long-term side effects, driven at least in part by a profit motive.

The debate fueled by California “psychiatric survivors” peaked in 1982, when they succeeded in placing electroshock therapy on the ballot in Berkeley. Residents voted 2-to-1 to ban the procedure within city limits, but the measure was quickly overturned in court.

Chabasinski, 69, a Berkeley attorney, is the very definition of a psychiatric survivor. A line on his Web bio summarizes his mental health experiences: “Shocked, Inpatient, Outpatient, Forced Treatment, Raped, Restraints, Tortured, Solitary Confinement.” With his natural mother incarcerated, Chabasinski was in foster care from birth. “The doctors had decided I was mentally ill before I was even born; hereditary views of mental illness were very much the fashion,” he said in a recent interview.

Chabasinski received electroshock therapy from Dr. Lauretta Bender at New York City’s Bellevue hospital in one of the first experiments involving children. He was 6 years old and would spend the next few years in what amounted to psychiatric solitary confinement.

Frank, 74, a longtime Pacific Heights resident, edits successful books of quotations for Random House. Born in Brooklyn, he landed in San Francisco after college and an Army stint. He was happy to hang out in North Beach and in no particular hurry to find a job. Distressed by his beatnik “lifestyle,” his parents had him involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital where he received 50 insulin coma treatments and 35 electroshocks in 1962 and 1963.

The impact on Frank’s memory was “like wiping a wet eraser on a chalkboard,” he said. He no longer remembered that JFK had been elected. More troublesome yet was the ablation of much of his Wharton School college education. Finally released from the hospital, “I decided I would spend my life fighting this,” he recounted in a recent interview in which he shared excerpts from his online “electroshock quotationary.”

Although Chabasinski and Frank and their fellow psychiatric survivors were unsuccessful in banning electroshock therapy, they were able to persuade California legislators to pass some of the strictest laws in the country regulating the practice.

Before administering the treatment in California, a psychiatrist must assert that other options have been exhausted. A second opinion must be secured from a physician who doesn’t use electroshock, and the episode must be reported to state authorities. Although “Shock” laments the California regulations as reducing the procedure’s availability throughout the state, one local practitioner embraces them.

Dr. Robert Dolgoff practices psychiatry at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley and teaches at UCSF. Much of his practice consists of referrals for electroconvulsive therapy.

“We are proud of what we do; we help incredibly vulnerable people,” said Dolgoff. His busy office is in the basement, not to hide it but because “that is the space we got.” Not all of the patients referred to Dolgoff for the treatment end up receiving it because he believes it is truly a measure of last resort.

“All of our patients have tried at least two drug regimens before coming to us for ECT. But it is much more typical for them to have tried four, five or six different drugs and still be suffering,” Dolgoff said.

Dolgoff acknowledges that some patients will experience memory loss for some of the time surrounding the procedure; discussing this risk is a key part of the informed consent process. But do extremely depressed patients have the wherewithal to weigh all the factors? “That is where the second opinion is helpful,” Dolgoff said. California also requires a court order for the therapy to be administered against a patient’s will.

Dolgoff said he rarely receives referrals for court-ordered electroconvulsive treatment, but when he does there is a good reason. “You have to understand that by this point patients are dying because they are so depressed that they are basically unwilling or unable to eat. ECT offers the prospect of a much more rapid turnaround than antidepressant drugs.”

No Responses »

Electroconvulsive Therapy Causes Permanent Amnesia And Cognitive Deficits, Prominent Researcher Admits

Medical News Today
Dec 22 2006

In a stunning reversal, an article in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology in January 2007 by prominent researcher Harold Sackeim of Columbia University reveals that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) causes permanent amnesia and permanent deficits in cognitive abilities, which affect individuals’ ability to function.

“This study provides the first evidence in a large, prospective sample that adverse cognitive effects can persist for an extended period, and that they characterize routine treatment with ECT in community settings,” the study notes.

For the past 25 years, ECT patients were told by Sackeim, the nation’s top ECT researcher, that the controversial treatment doesn’t cause permanent amnesia and, in fact, improves memory and increases intelligence. Psychologist Sackeim also taught a generation of ECT practitioners that permanent amnesia from ECT is so rare that it could not be studied. He asserted that most people who said the treatment erased years of memory were mentally ill and thus not credible.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) estimates that more than 3 million people have received ECT over the past generation. “Those patients who reported permanent adverse effects on cognition have now had their experiences validated,” said Linda Andre, head of the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry, a national organization of ECT recipients.

Since the mid-1980s, Sackeim worked as a consultant to the ECT device manufacturer Mecta Corp. He never revealed his financial interest in ECT to NIMH, as required by federal law, and, until 2002, did not reveal it to New York officials as required by state law. Neuropsychopharmacology has endured negative publicity over its failure to disclose financial conflicts of journal authors, resulting in the editor’s resignation and a promise to disclose such conflicts in the future; yet there is no disclosure of Sackeim’s long-term relationship with Mecta, nor did Sackeim disclose his financial conflict when his NIMH grant was renewed to 2009 at approximately $500,000 per year.

The six-month study followed about 250 patients in New York City hospitals, an unusually large number; most ECT studies are based on 20 to 30 patients. Sackeim’s previously published studies were short term, making it impossible to assess long-term effects. “However, in other contexts over the years — court depositions, communications with mental health officials, and grant protocols — Sackeim has claimed to follow up patients for as long as five years. This raises serious questions as to how long he has actually known of the existence and prevalence of permanent amnesia and why it wasn’t revealed until now,” Andre said.

Besides finding that ECT routinely causes substantial and permanent amnesia, the study contradicts Sackeim’s oft-published statements that ECT increases intelligence and that patients who report permanent adverse effects are mentally ill.

“The study is a stunning self-repudiation of a 25-year career,” Andre said.

6 Responses »

StreetInsider.com
Nov 22, 2006

Tenet Healthcare Corporation (NYSE: THC) has reached a settlement with the Internal Revenue Service to resolve certain disputed issues in connection with the audit of its tax returns for the fiscal years 1995, 1996 and 1997. As part of the settlement, the company said it expects to make a payment in the fourth quarter of 2006 of approximately $80 million representing taxes and interest owed under the settlement.

The company expects the settlement announced today will not have a material impact on income from continuing or discontinued operations after taking into account the impact of the deferred tax valuation allowance.

No Responses »

29 November 2006
Scoop Independent News

First Annual Report of the Office of the Director of Mental Health released
The first annual report by the Office of the Director of Mental Health has been released today by the Ministry of Health.

The publication provides a record of the work the office does and reports on some of the activities of District Inspectors of Mental Health and the Mental Health Review Tribunal. It is part of the office’s accountability to the sector and will be of significant interest to many people, including mental health service users and their families, those who work in the sector, and advocacy groups. It will also contribute to improved standards of care and treatment for people with a mental illness.

“We are proud of this work and believe it is an enormous achievement. The report reflects the importance we place on transparency and accountability to the sector and the wider public. We hope to build on this information in subsequent reports and include trend data,” says Dr David Chaplow, Director of Mental Health and Chief Advisor Mental Health.

The report is divided into three sections. The first section looks at how the office operates and the legislation it is guided by. The second section describes the work carried out by the office in 2005 and the third section provides information on the use of the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992, electroconvulsive therapy treatments and deaths of people subject to the Act. An appendix provides historical background on compulsory treatment in New Zealand.

For the first time raw data on the use of compulsory treatment is being published. It shows marked variations between district health boards.The data has not been analysed and the differences could be due to a range of reasons, such as the differences in the nature of their populations, service coverage or clinical practice.

Information on the numbers and outcomes of Special and Restricted-Patient’s leave and change of legal status applications considered by the Health Minister are also included.

“We have not captured all the data we would like, for example statistics on the use of force, serious adverse incidents and seclusion are not included because the earlier data is not reliable enough,” Dr Chaplow says.

” However, District Health Boards now have more robust reporting procedures in place and as a result we expect to be able to include trend data in future annual reports.”

The report also includes research looking at the outcomes for Special Patients found not guilty of a crime, by reason of insanity, over the last three decades. The work followed an indication by the Law Commission that it intended to review section 23 of the Crimes Act 1961, which relates to insanity.

“Our research found that following discharge in to the community, people acquitted on the grounds of insanity are reconvicted of violent crimes at a very low rate, although readmission to hospital is more common,” Dr Chaplow says.

During 2005 there were 23 deaths recorded for people subject to the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992, of which six were suspected suicides.

Full report

4 Responses »

Dec 6 2006
Reuters Health Information
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Dec 06 - Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is comparable to pharmacologic treatment in preventing relapse of depression, but both approaches have limited efficacy, investigators report in the December Archives of General Psychiatry.
While electroconvulsive therapy is extremely effective for acute treatment of major depression, ECT is also being used as continuation or maintenance treatment (C-ECT) to prevent relapse. However, there are few data to support such use, note Dr. Charles H. Kellner and colleagues at five different academic clinical centers.
Dr. Kellner, from the UMDNJ New Jersey Medical School in Newark, and members of the CORE group (Consortium for Research in ECT) conducted a two-phase trial with 531 patients with primary major depressive disorder.
The first phase involved a course of bilateral ECT delivered three times per week for all the subjects until their illness went into remission. Participants who maintained remission at 1 week were then randomly assigned in the second phase to continuation ECT or a combination of nortriptyline and lithium.
ECT was administered weekly for 4 weeks, every other week for 8 weeks, and monthly for 2 months.
Relapse rates were 37.1% for C-ECT and 31.6% for medication treatment. In the two arms, 46.1% and 46.3% remained in remission, respectively, while 16.8% and 22.1% dropped out.
Subjects in both groups who remained in remission showed similarly improved cognitive abilities during the course of the trial, as assessed by the modified MMSE.
“An important interpretation of these data is that relapse or treatment discontinuation rates after successful ECT remain unacceptably high with standard treatment regimens,” Dr. Kellner and his team write, although they acknowledge that both types of treatment were “modestly effective in preventing depressive relapse.”
However, they caution that failure to detect significant differences between groups “cannot be taken to mean that the outcomes in the two groups are equal.” Instead, their advice is to decide treatment options “based on judgments about tolerability for the individual patient and patient preference.”
They hope that further research will turn up biomarkers to predict which patients will respond better to one or the other treatment. They also suggest that better remission rates might be achieved by combining C-ECT and medication therapy.
Arch Gen Psychiatry 2006;63:1337-1344.

No Responses »

Dec 7 2006

By Gemma Collins
Berkshire Co UK

A FRAIL pensioner who battled with manic depression for 60 years, died after undergoing electric shock therapy at Reading’s Prospect Park Hospital.

Violet Dixon, 81, who suffered from Bipolar affective disorder was given Electroconvulsive Therapy after becoming so depressed and run down that staff feared she would die.

Mrs Dixon who lived with husband Victor in Compton near Newbury had been suffering from anxiety and depression since the 1940s and in the last three years had received several ECT treatments - which involves passing an electric charge through electrodes on her head to provoke a fit or a seizure.

A Reading inquest heard that in February, while sectioned under the Mental Health Act, Prospect Park staff felt she needed electric shock treatment because she was not responding to medication.

But after a second treatment, Mrs Dixon started vomiting, despite being anaesthetised and not having eaten for 24 hours.

She was rushed to the Royal Berkshire Hospital with Aspiration Pneumonia - caused by inhaling vomit - but died there the next day.

The post-mortem revealed that, unknown to her doctor at Prospect Park Hospital, Mrs Dixon had been suffering from an inflamed gall bladder.

Royal Berks anaesthetist Dr Gillian Harrison, who put Mrs Dixon under before her ECT, said: “These patients are mentally ill and often have other medical problems which are very difficult to tell when they won’t give you any history because they are so ill, and they won’t be compliant to medical tests.

“Mrs Dixon had been carefully examined, it was totally unexpected that she had bowel obstruction.”

Berkshire coroner Peter Bedford, recording a ‘narrative verdict’, said Mrs Dixon had undergone many previous ECT treatments without adverse effects.

He said gall stones had caused an undiagnosed gall bladder infection, and added: “This had caused an obstruction which led to severe gastric delay and in turn led to the sequence of events causing her death.”

One Response »

Meals on Wheels Association of America (MOWAA) and Banfield, The Pet Hospital have teamed up to provide meals for pets this holiday season. The campaign is called Season of Suppers.

After discovering that countless senior recipients of Meals On Wheels were feeding their food to their pets, MOWAA created We All Love Our Pets (WALOP), a new initiative that seeks to unite Meals On Wheels programs across the country that are providing pet food.

It’s EASY to donate! Go to any Banfield or Meals on Wheels office and drop off your donation, either pet food or monetary. I shop at PetSmart, and there’s a Banfield inside. They’ve made it easy - there’s a box right there, and I bought extra food - dog and cat - and dropped it in. I plan to continue….it’s easy and every little bit helps a dog or cat and owner. Your food donation stays in your own county, for area MOW recipients.

I’m a believer in the power of pets to help people emotionally and health-wise. Health professionals are beginning to realize the power of pets as well, and are bringing pets into nursing homes and hospital rooms to visit. IT HELPS!

What a FABULOUS program this is. My thanks go out to MOWAA and Banfield for their efforts, and I ask that you give as much as you possibly can. Even one can or box of food will help feed a pet.

Bringing pets and people together - and finding ways to help - has always been a “pet” cause of mine. It helps the individual who gets unconditional love, and it saves another life of a dog or cat that otherwise might not find a home. It’s a win-win for all!

Meals on Wheels provides hot meals for elderly and persons with disabilities. I have a special fondness for them because as my grandmother became older, she found it hard to cook a healthy meal. Meals on Wheels brought her healthy, hot meals. What’s more, my grandmother, a farm woman, always loved her pets. Cats especially. She was lucky enough to be able to afford food for her cats, but many are not so blessed.

So while you’re out doing your errands and holiday shopping, stop by your local Banfield and drop off a donation of food or money! It’s a Season of Suppers and you can help. Thank you for your generosity!

Visit Banfield, The Pet Hospital
Visit Meals on Wheels

——

Who are those pets in the banner pictures?

The elderly woman and dog picture comes from MOWAA. The rest of the pets are mine. The dog is Sharik, who passed away several years ago. (Sharik means little ball in Russian, and Sharik is the most common dog name in Russian. But I named her after the hero of my favorite book, Heart of a Dog by Bulgakov.) She was a golden retriever/chow mix whose mother was a stray that found shelter in my uncle’s barn. I hope to see her again at the Rainbow Bridge one day. I miss her terribly.

The black cat is Dmitri, who died one year ago. I got him as a kitten from the vet, who had some babies who needed homes. He was 16 when he died and lived a generous life. He never met a person, dog or cat he didn’t like. He had the ability to turn every dog he met into a friend. I credit that gift to Sharik, who raised him from a kitten. They had a very special relationship. I miss him so much, and so does Jack.

Jack is the gray cat and he came from Seattle. He’s the Internet cat and loved by so many around the world. His owner, Catharine, was dying of breast cancer. She had adopted him from a Seattle shelter, where he’d been in a feral colony. She worried that he would be dumped when she died, so she reached out to people in a cat health discussion group to find Jack a home. Long, wonderful story of Netizen generosity short - Jack made his way to me on the pet bus. You can read Jack and Dmitri’s love story here.

He and Dmitri had some beautiful years together and became joined at the hip. When Dmitri died, Jack became so grief stricken and horribly depressed. Two weeks later, I went to PetSmart for food and they were having an adoption day.

I’ve always felt that Dmitri was there guiding me that day, telling me to bring that deaf little girl home. And I did. That’s the white cat, Jasmine. She’s special with her disability, but we’ve learned some sign language and she brought Jack out of his despair. She did the same for me, and she’s a funny little cat. She likes to dunk her toy mice in the toilet and drown them. She also likes to “hide” in paper bags and attack everyone. We all (including Jack) pretend to be surprised. She doesn’t know that she makes a lot of noise in her bag, so she hides, then jumps out and boxes feet. She squeals with joy and runs back into her bag.

Nobody wanted Jasmine because she had a disability, but that made her special.

So please, please give what you can to this wonderful program. And you can find a list of other pet charities that I support on my links page.

Thanks for reading! And thanks for giving.

2 Responses »

Archives of General Psychiatry
Dec 2006

A Multisite Study From the Consortium for Research in Electroconvulsive Therapy (CORE)

Charles H. Kellner, MD; Rebecca G. Knapp, PhD; Georgios Petrides, MD; Teresa A. Rummans, MD; Mustafa M. Husain, MD; Keith Rasmussen, MD; Martina Mueller, PhD; Hilary J. Bernstein, DHA; Kevin O’Connor, MD; Glenn Smith, PhD; Melanie Biggs, PhD; Samuel H. Bailine, MD; Chitra Malur, MD; Eunsil Yim, MS; Shawn McClintock, MS; Shirlene Sampson, MD; Max Fink, MD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2006;63:1337-1344.

Background  Although electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has been shown to be extremely effective for the acute treatment of major depression, it has never been systematically assessed as a strategy for relapse prevention.

Objective  To evaluate the comparative efficacy of continuation ECT (C-ECT) and the combination of lithium carbonate plus nortriptyline hydrochloride (C-Pharm) in the prevention of depressive relapse.

Design  Multisite, randomized, parallel design, 6-month trial performed from 1997 to 2004.

Setting  Five academic medical centers and their outpatient psychiatry clinics.

Patients  Two hundred one patients with Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV–diagnosed unipolar depression who had remitted with a course of bilateral ECT.

Interventions  Random assignment to 2 treatment groups receiving either C-ECT (10 treatments) or C-Pharm for 6 months.

Main Outcome Measure  Relapse of depression, compared between the C-ECT and C-Pharm groups.

Results  In the C-ECT group, 37.1% experienced disease relapse, 46.1% continued to have disease remission at the study end, and 16.8% dropped out of the study. In the C-Pharm group, 31.6% experienced disease relapse, 46.3% continued to have disease remission, and 22.1% dropped out of the study. Both Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional hazards regression analyses indicated no statistically significant differences in overall survival curves and time to relapse for the groups. Mean ± SD time to relapse for the C-ECT group was 9.1 ± 7.0 weeks compared with 6.7 ± 4.6 weeks for the C-Pharm group (P = .13). Both groups had relapse proportions significantly lower than a historical placebo control from a similarly designed study.

Conclusions  Both C-ECT and C-Pharm were shown to be superior to a historical placebo control, but both had limited efficacy, with more than half of patients either experiencing disease relapse or dropping out of the study. Even more effective strategies for relapse prevention in mood disorders are urgently needed.

Author Affiliations: Department of Psychiatry, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey–New Jersey Medical School, Newark (Drs Kellner, Petrides, and O’Connor); Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (Dr Kellner) and Biostatistics, Bioinformatics, and Epidemiology (Drs Knapp and Mueller and Mss Bernstein and Yim), Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston; Department of Psychiatry, The Zucker Hillside Hospital, North Shore–Long Island Health System, Glen Oaks, NY (Drs Petrides, Bailine, Malur, and Fink); Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, Mayo Foundation, Rochester, Minn (Drs Rummans, Rasmussen, Smith, and Sampson); and Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas (Drs Husain and Biggs and Mr McClintock).

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Ignored for decades, the twisted genius of Mervyn Peake is finally getting the attention it deserves

BY JOEL MEADOWS
Time
Dec 11, 2006

With a career encompassing 25 years that included five novels, a handful of plays and thousands of drawings, paintings and sketches, why isn’t Mervyn Peake a more celebrated English literary and artistic hero? A cult figure today, Peake is best known for Gormenghast, his bleak but compelling gothic fantasy trilogy published in the 1940s and ’50s about the hierarchy of a fictional castle, Gormenghast, and the Machiavellian machinations of its inhabitants. But he was also an accomplished illustrator, painter and war artist. “If somebody’s good at everything, then they’re never taken seriously, are they?” muses Chris Beetles, owner of the eponymous gallery in St. James’ in London that hosted a rare exhibition of Peake’s art in October.

It is precisely this failure to acknowledge Peake’s breadth of talent that Mervyn Peake: The Man and His Art, a new and comprehensive guide to his career, seeks to redress. In 1998, Peake’s son Sebastian met Alison Eldred, an avid collector of Peake’s artworks at Beetles’ gallery, and over dinner the new acquaintances decided to compile and edit a book which, says Sebastian, would show his father’s “eclecticism and breadth to a new generation.”

Though Peake’s talent is indisputable, the source of his marvelously twisted imagination is elusive. Unlike the early years of many masters of the macabre, Peake’s childhood was happy and contented. The son of a doctor with the London Missionary Society, Peake was born in Kuling, China, in 1911 and lived there until he was 11 years old. As a boy, he learned 600 basic Mandarin characters from a Chinese calligrapher, causing later observers to remark on the strange way he held his pen. After his family returned to England, Peake finished his education at Croydon School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools.

Early in his career, Peake became a documentary war artist during World War II. This experience appears to have pushed his world view and his art into a considerably darker realm. In June 1945, he was among the first British civilians to visit the liberated concentration camp at Belsen, Germany. Most of the former prisoners he saw there were too sick to be evacuated. The stark poems and drawings he made about these victims literally dying before his eyes are nearly too harrowing to bear. Returning to Britain, he finished the first Gormenghast book in 1946 and spent the next 20 years as a writer and illustrator, contributing art to the tales of the Brothers Grimm, Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.

While his style is similar to American contemporary Edward Gorey, Peake’s bizarre sensibilities were less cruel. He enjoyed great critical acclaim as an artist during his career — he was commissioned by the Queen Mother to do illustrations for her grandson Prince Charles’ nursery in the 1950s — but he was largely ignored by the literary observers of the time. Kingsley Amis once called Peake “a bad fantasy writer of maverick status.”

This book shows just how wrong Amis and his cohorts were. The heavily illustrated tome punctuates examples of Peake’s art and excerpts of his writing with purely biographical chapters. Cartoonist Chris Riddell of the Observer Sunday newspaper, Lord of the Rings illustrator John Howe, and others who have been influenced by Peake contribute a range of essays and analysis as well.

Fantasy and science fiction author Michael Moorcock, who contributes an introduction to the book, says: “Peake is in the great tradition of idiosyncratic English writers. His poetry and fiction, like theirs is sui generis and, like his drawing and painting, reveals authentic genius.” Comic-book writer Alan ( Watchmen, Lost Girls) Moore calls Peake “probably one of the finest writers in the English language,” but says literary snobbery that considers fantasy a lesser art form has contributed to his neglect.

Already at an ebb in his career, Peake developed Parkinson’s disease in 1956. Despite attempts to improve his health with electroconvulsive therapy — in which high-voltage electricity is passed through the brain — he died in 1968 at the age of 57. His wife Maeve Gilmore, almost destitute after he died, went to the Tate Gallery to sell her husband’s body of work. She was offered £1,500 for the complete collection. Disgusted, she stormed out. If there is any justice, Mervyn Peake: The Man and His Art may well ensure that such snubs are not repeated.

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‘I don’t believe in dressing up reality’

Bernard Zuel
December 8, 2006
Syndey Morning Herald

To understand Lou Reed you could begin where he began: the works of American poet and author Delmore Schwartz and the novels of proto-grunge writer Hubert Selby jnr, author of Last Exit To Brooklyn and Requiem For A Dream.

By the time the Long Island-raised Reed met him at Syracuse University in the early 1960s, Schwartz was in the last years of his life and showing the effects of alcohol and drug abuse. He befriended the young English student, encouraging him to write naturally, to use the vernacular, a lesson that left its lasting mark via his early book, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. Reed was to say later: “I read that in college and it changed my life forever. One of the greatest short stories ever written, five pages and not one polysyllabic word.”

At the same time Reed was developing a strong response to the realism of Selby’s portrayals of the American demi-monde, the hookers, hop-heads, the damaged war veterans. These weren’t imagined people, no matter what shocked critics and the comfortable middle class said. The effect was immense on Reed, who in his teens had been subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, ordered by his parents, who were disturbed by his developing homosexuality.

As he was to later say of his writing: “The idea behind it was to try and bring a novelist’s eye to it and, within the framework of rock and roll, to try to have that lyric there so somebody who enjoys being engaged on that level could have that and have the rock and roll, too - I don’t believe in dressing up reality. I don’t believe in using make-up to make things look smoother.”

When Reed began writing songs upon moving to New York in 1963, the material he wrote at the publishing house Pickwick Records was in stark contrast to the material he wrote at home. The private songs included Heroin and Waiting For The Man, two songs about the pleasures and deprivations of a drug user, later to appear on the albums of his group the Velvet Underground. Later, there would be songs about the transvestites and experimental artists who shared his downtown neighbourhood, songs about the prostitutes and underage runaways who were beaten at home and on the streets, songs about crippled relationships and weak human beings.

Welsh avant-garde musician John Cale, who met Reed at Pickwick where their almost instant bond led them to form the Velvets, said Reed’s songs weren’t necessarily autobiographical but “they gained their strength from first-person reportage”. Or, to steal a line from a Velvets song, “I’ll be your mirror/Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know”.

Suffering and degradation had long been staples of the blues, but it was rare in pop and rock. In the late ’60s, when the Velvets first played in San Francisco, their grimy, sometimes vicious tales were in sharp opposition to the hippie scene developing there and in London.

In the 1970s, as Reed’s solo career began, the lyrical and musical signposts were as jarring. In an interview with artist Julian Schnabel, who has designed the Berlin show coming to the Sydney Festival: “I’ve always been interested in emotion and transcendence - where do these things come from and what do you do with them when you have them?”

Even when Reed was aligned with the glam rock scene, hanging out with David Bowie, who produced his most successful solo album, Transformer, and sporting the androgynous look, he stood out. Rather than camp, there was about him the threat of the street tough giving off the “waves of fear” he sang about.

Musically, too, Reed wasn’t easily quantifiable by ordinary standards. From the start he’d noted and applied the assaulting noise and harsh, free jazz shapes of Pharaoh Saunders and Ornette Coleman. It was there in the sonic pummelling of the second Velvets album, White Light White Heat, and taken to extremes in 1975’s feedback-loaded Metal Machine Music. But he was just as capable of songs of almost ephemeral delicacy, such as Pale Blue Eyes , and haunting sadness, as in much of Berlin.

His career has been inconsistent and dotted with at most two dozen great songs, but Reed has rarely failed to provoke a response. “My primary thing has always been to spark an emotion in the listener that they might not be prepared for,” Reed said a few years ago. He has succeeded more often than most.

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Nebraska TV
Thursday 12/07/06

Electroshock Therapy, now called Electroconvulsive Therapy or ECT, a surge of electricity to the brain, is still being used to treat severe depression. NTV talked to one patient who says he wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for this controversial treatment.

“After my third suicide attempt, they mentioned ECT. It almost sounded like a last line of defense, said Kevin Karmazin, an ECT patient.

Kevin’s depression was serious. He was already on a cocktail of anti-depressants that wasn’t working.

“When I was manic I was out of control. I couldn’t sit still. I spent a lot of money and would often stay up for days in a row,” said Karmazin.

He says the pills created many adverse side effects.

“They just threw all this medicine at me. You didn’t know what side effect was caused by which pill,” said Karmazin.

But all that changed when he went through ECT.

“I was super nervous. But the next thing I remember, I’m waking up, and I’m like, ‘Are we done already?’ said Karmazin. “I felt refreshed and rejuvenated afterward … It’s been an all-good experience for me.”

Although Kevin has experienced some memory loss, a side-effect of ECT, he says it is worth it.

“If I would have known how much it would help me, I would have done it a long time ago,” said Karmazin.

Kevin’s story is not unique. Doctors are now saying that anti-depressants may not be as effective for serious depression. Patients may want to consider ECT.

“Any medication, the data shows, is not quite as good as ECT,” said Dr. Jasung Kim, a Psychiatrist M.D. at Bryan LGH Medical Center in Lincoln.

In fact, Kim says ECT may work better than traditional methods.

“It’s a more potent way to stimulate the brain, period. No medication can compete with ECT, that’s reality,” said Dr. Kim.

“I thank God they thought of doing this to me. I don’t know what else they could have done.”

It’s important to note that ECT is not right for everybody. Doctors say it is used as a last resort for serious depression. Some doctors will not even consider ECT, saying it is too invasive.

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Toronto Daily News
Dec 7 2006

There’s no quick fix for depression. Even if you are under medical care and taking antidepressant medication, improvement takes time.

There’s no quick fix for depression. Even if you are under medical care and taking antidepressant medication, improvement takes time.

The December issue of Mayo Clinic Women’s HealthSource offers five self-care strategies that can help you feel better and reduce the risk of recurrence.

1. Keep active. As little as 15 to 30 minutes of physical activity most days has been shown to improve mood. Long-term regular exercise can help prevent recurrence.

2. Eat well. A well-balanced eating strategy will help you feel better now and later as you battle depression.

• Eat more whole grains, beans and vegetables. They provide a longer-lasting energy source than processed baked goods and sugar.

• Eat regular meals, especially breakfast. Regular meals avoid the irritability and overeating that can come from skipping meals. Both can lead to worsening of depression.

• Increase your intake of cold-water fish such as salmon, halibut, tuna and bluefish. Research indicates that the omega-3 fatty acids in these cold-water fish may help reduce symptoms of depression.

• Avoid alcohol and caffeine, which can contribute to depression and anxiety.

3. Get adequate sleep if you feel depressed. Aim for eight hours a night, and be consistent with bedtime.

4. Control stress. Coping with depression is stressful enough, so try to limit other sources of stress.

5. If you need a break, take it, even if it’s just a day trip or weekend getaway.

6. Recognize stress signals and slow down. Is your stomach upset? Are you forgetting things or feeling extra irritable? Take notice of your signals and do something about it.

7. Stay connected. Make relationships a priority. Social ties give you a sense of purpose and meaning in life which is important when you suffer from depression.

8. Recognize the importance of give and take. It’s true you should give of yourself in a relationship, but it’s also important to receive from others, especially when you are depressed.

9. Cultivate your spirituality. Studies have shown that believing in something larger than yourself strengthens your ability to cope with depression.

10. Avoid negative and unhealthy connections that might bring you down.

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