Speak Out Against Shock (ECT)
Category: Personal Accounts
Without Restraint
Spring 2000
I spent 25 years in a state of confusion and despair. My brother died and I turned to alcohol. I had 108 admissions, and approximately 80 ECT treatments. They were treating me for an addiction; they did this with ECT treatments; the doctors kept giving me more and more medication (every drug under the sun), up to 17 different pills per day. As a result of the shock treatments, I am missing large portions of my memory and suffer chronic severe back pain from not enough relaxants. My children suffered from the effects of a loss of a parent. My friends didn’t know how to respond to my behaviour, the hallucinations and delusions. They (Psychiatrists) would shock me, get me all medicated up and send me home where I would drive a taxi. Finally after 25 years of this hell, I ended up in a bad car crash. I was charged and convicted of impaired driving. It was the best thing that could have happened to me … It was the beginning of the end. I stopped taking all the meds, refused any more shock, and then a year later - quit drinking. I have not been in a hospital since, except to visit. Still, today when I walk down the halls of Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital (LPH), patients come up to me and say “Hi”, they know me, but I have no idea of who they are. They don’t even look familiar. They say I spent a lot of time with them, but I have no memory. Part of me is missing forever. They treat us like guinea pigs, trying anything on us with no concern about the damage they do. Why do we give them this power? Why is it that medical doctors, whom are not experts on mental health, can prescribe any psycho tropic agents, even against a psychiatrist’s advice? Why aren’t they required to learn more about mental illnesses before they go around diagnosing and drugging us? I am not saying there aren’t competent professionals, or that you shouldn’t listen to your doctor. What I’m saying is that you should make sure you are making an informed decision, and ensure that the communication is there between your psychiatrist and GP. During my 25 years in the mental health system, some “professionals” recommended that I be taken off all the drugs, given no- more shock and receive proper counseling. My GP chose to ignore this advice without even informing me of their recommendations. This is unacceptable. What has personally helped me is counseling and the peer support I receive from the self-help group that I am actively involved with. I am dead against ECT under any circumstances. Even with the people it helps, the results are short-lived and the side effects long term. Why would delivering electricity through a brain be anything less than destructive and damaging?
If you would like to contact me, please e-mail me at seps@voyageur.ca or fax me at 807-468-2220.
Or write me at:
Wayne Lax
Comp. 4, Site 297, RR#2
Kenora, Ontario
P9N 3W8
Added: Jul 17, 2006 2:02 pm | Trackback URI | Email This Post | Print
hi!,
ECT must be de-legalized because it continues to be used despite widespread public and proffessional condemnation.
There must be criminal prosecutions of the misguided and sadistic perpetrators of this archaic, dangerous, cruel treatment.
Because of the element of sadism inherent in this treatment, those who choose it(either as patient, practitoner, relative or other), must be ordered to undergo councelling. They are very sick people and a danger to others and need help.
Incurable conditions are targets for quack and ineffective treatments and such treatments can unfortunately persist for hundreds of years and keep reappearing in all kinds of new editions, even after they are repeatedly discredited with solid evidence and proof. It seems these time wasting medical frauds will not be snuffed out completely until the top medical and public administrative authorities act in unison and with great force and dominance using the media and medical literature to spread the message, in this case, that ECT is utterly worthless as treatment and harmful to brain tisssue.
It was like this with blood letting. They just wont let go of established practise easily. And there are the endless ridiculous false testiments and reams of medical propaganda that can obstruct change indefinitely if strong action is not taken at some point- soon hopefully.
ECT is so harmful and counterproductive and we are not in the dark ages. Continuance is inexcusable.
Patients are not the only ones whose depression is caused and exacerbated by ECT. Anyone who knows about the very existence of ECT can be excused for feeling depressed at it’s continued use. It does after all indicate the very low state to which humanity can sink in harming people sadisticaly whilst claiming to cure or help them.
from: ahcp.blogspot.com