Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), shock treatment or electroshock is used as an intervention for certain mental illnesses.  Most often it is used to alleviate symptoms of severe depression.  The treatment consists of electricity being run through the brain to induce a grand mal seizure.  My mother is an ECT survivor.  She experienced 19 years of retrograde amnesia, anterograde amnesia, and severe cognitive impairment after her course of ECT.  I watched a treatment which was supposed to heal, destroy.  I watched a woman grow more depressed as she realized that she had lost a huge portion of her life—a woman whom described a feeling as one of being erased.  I ask this: Why are shock treatments still being given?

During ECT, two electrodes are placed on either side of the brain, if the patient is having bilateral treatment, or one in the center of the brain, if the patient is having unilateral treatment (Santore).  My mother had 28 bilateral shock treatments given over the course of approximately three months.  Next, the patient is administered general anesthesia, a muscle relaxant so that bones are not broken during the procedure and a mouth guard so that the patient doesn’t damage his or her teeth and other oral structures.  Large amounts of electricity are then run through the brain to induce a grand mal seizure.  The amount of electricity used would kill a person if it hit any other part of the body (Santore).

Trying to describe from a personal perspective what ECT had done to Pamela’s life was nearly impossible for her to articulate.  She described the feelings of loss as being so great that she didn’t know how to assimilate them into her daily life and that she therefore didn’t know what a normal life was anymore (Santore).  “I went through a mourning process as though there were a death because, truthfully, there had been one for me,” states Pamela.  She no longer remembered giving birth to her children, or raising them.  That was the most difficult part of it all for her. People could tell her stories about her missing years, but they wouldn’t trigger the memories—they were just stories.  They were just information about her past.  She felt no connection to them.  Looking at photographs didn’t trigger memories for her, either.  They were like looking at a stranger’s photographs (Santore).  “Losing my memories was like losing myself because memories make up a huge part of who you are.  It’s so hard to describe what I went through—what I continue to go through.  Every day, I mourn my loss.  I’ve cried rivers of tears.  I’ve raged.  I still cry to this day.  I think I always will.  I never thought I would get to a point where I could speak about it calmly,” says Pamela.  Some of the things she enjoyed before ECT, she no longer enjoys.  Some of the things she didn’t have an interest in before ECT, she now has an interest in after ECT (Santore).  She needed to relearn simple tasks.  She stood perplexed at the iron one day and eventually had to call my grandmother for help in turning it on.  It took her months to relearn how to change the television input to the DVD player.  Her focus and processing speed after four years is still a problem, along with all of the other challenges she faces (Santore).

Because of the trouble she was having processing things, she had eight hours of neuropsychological testing after ECT and the test results were not positive.  The doctor judged her to have a pre-morbid IQ of about 110 and when she went into the office to get the results, one of the first things out of the doctor’s mouth was that she had probably lost about 20 IQ points (Santore).  She fell apart in tears on the spot.  When she viewed the 10 page report, all she saw were the words “low average” and “defective” more times than not (Santore).

My mother researched ECT with a vengeance after the damage was done and she was able to focus enough to do so (Santore).  She needed to get answers.  She wrote down everything that she read which discussed the damaging effects of shock treatment.  Unfortunately, more is written about the benefits of the treatment.  This propaganda is what led her to have the procedure in the first place.  My mother was given a pamphlet by the doctor prior to treatment that said that short term memory loss surrounding the time of the treatments was a possibility and that it should resolve itself within a few weeks.  During her research she discovered that the effects of the therapy only last up to a month in duration, so they created something called “maintenance” ECT where patients go in for more ECT on a weekly or bi-weekly basis for the rest of their lives unless they end the course of the treatment, which is what my mother did. She wasn’t improving, she was getting worse (Santore).

The false information that is fed to the public is abundant.  In 1999, a U.S. Surgeon General wrote in a paper “that the exact mechanisms by which ECT exerts its therapeutic effect are not yet known” (Ramsay).  Psychiatrist Daniel J. Carlat, M.D., in his book published in 2010 by the title, “Unhinged: The Trouble With Psychiatry,” writes “the major problem with ECT is identical to the problem with psychiatric medication. While ECT works, we have no idea how or why.”  In January of 2013, WebMD published commentary stating that ECT is probably effective by adjusting brain chemicals but it’s not known how “this brain stimulation” works (Ramsay).  ECT kills neurons.  Each time a seizure occurs, neurons die.  Neurons are the only part of the body that cannot be healed.

Texas Medical Examiner, Carl Walker, J.D., M.D., said that during autopsies of brains he saw “fibrous bands of scar tissue between the electrode placement points where normal tissue had been destroyed by scar tissue.”  After seeing how unpleasant a brain looks like after a series of shock treatments, neurosurgeon Karl H. Pribram, M.D. said that he would prefer to have a “small lobotomy” over a course of ECT (Ramsay).

Doctors don’t disclose the truth to their patients as discussed in a scholarly article entitled, “Memory and Cognitive Effects of ECT: informing and assessing patients,” by Harold Robertson and Robin Pryor.  Patients are not told by clinicians that a least 50% of patients report suffering some sort of debilitating side effect.  They are not told that amnesia may “be presented as having multiple divisions: the amount of life lost, the temporal gradient, the nature of what is lost and the effect of the of the memory erasure on the individual’s life” (Robertson and Pryor).  There is no warning given as to the extent of memory loss and that it can be as far reaching as twenty years.  There is no mention in the consent forms given to patients of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) recommendation regarding “the effects of permanent amnesia and/or memory and cognitive disability” which could negate any benefit achieved by ECT (Robertson and Pryor).  There was no mention of cognitive damage being a possible side effect in the paperwork that my mother signed (Santore).

Doctors, ironically never want to definitively state how ECT works—or have claimed not to know exactly how ECT works.  In an article entitled, “New Study Confirms Electroshock Causes Brain Damage,” by Dr. Peter R. Breggin states that media coverage regarding ECT was always positive and unquestioning.  He sarcastically writes that after 70 years of ECT being considered the foremost treatment for depression, science is now explaining how it works (Breggin).  He continues to state that the study followed bilateral ECT treatments, where electrodes are put over the temples, “overlapping the frontal lobes of the brain and that the most intensive surge of electricity hit the memory centers in the tip of the temporal lobes and affects the highest human functions in the frontal lobes” (Breggin).  There is then a disconnection between the frontal lobes and the rest of the brain.  Dr. Breggin emphatically states ECT affects the “dorsolateral prefrontal cortical region,” which is the same area which would be affected by a surgical lobotomy.  In Dr. Breggin’s opinion, ECT is a closed lobotomy (Breggin).

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not monitor ECT devices which are at a Stage III level (Gardner).  Stage III is considered the riskiest and/or experimental medical machines classified by the FDA.  Doctors need no special training to administer ECT.  Reports in 2011 surfaced saying that a panel recommended to the FDA that ECT machines be classified to a level II, which is considered less dangerous, but a huge public outcry prevented this from happening.  It is because of a grandfather clause that ECT machine manufacturers have avoided the FDA rigorous medical equipment testing process (Gardner).

The FDA not regulating ECT devices is one of the many reasons why Dr. John Breeding is seeking to abolish ECT in the state of Texas.  My mother actually spoke with him on the phone after her treatments as she did her research and found out that it’s the private hospitals that administer ECT because ECT makes hospitals money (Santore).  Dr. Breeding also explained to her that a large part of the problem with ECT today is the anesthesia and muscle relaxants that are administered.  These raise the threshold for producing the strength of the seizure necessary for the “cure” doctors’ are seeking.  The higher the threshold, the more electricity needed and therefore, the more brain damage suffered (Santore).  Dr. Breeding has many videos on YouTube and is the head of the Coalition for the Abolition of Electroshock in Texas. He considers it cruel, harmful and unnecessary.  He estimates that about 100,000 people receive ECT each year in this country (Breeding).  He compares the induced grand mal convulsion to an epileptic seizure when the passing of “70 to 600 volts of electric current through the brain for 0.5 to 4 seconds” is dispensed.  The convulsion can last from thirty to sixty seconds and can produce life threatening complications, which include death from various causes.  Records are not kept on causes of death from ECT (Breeding).

ECT survivor and writer, Leonard Roy Frank, clearly states in his article, “The Truth about Electroshock, ECT or Electroconvulsive Therapy—The Gray Zone” that brain damage always occurs from ECT.  He points out that the APA recommends scopes from one and a half to three times greater than required to induce a seizure.  Explaining that the electrical activity of the brain is normally measured in thousandths of a volt, the power of ECT is “literally hundreds of thousands of times greater than natural brain electrical activity” (Frank).

Linda Andre is an American ECT survivor, activist and writer.  She is the director of the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry and is the author of the book, “Doctors of Deception: What They Don’t Want You to Know about Shock Treatment.”  She has been interviewed by 20/20, The Atlantic, the New York Times and the Washington Post and has written numerous articles about the dangers of ECT.  She claims ECT is both barbaric and is also damaging to the brain. Her book argues that those that do the research on ECT stand to gain funding based on their results (Andre).  The APA puts millions of dollars into funding research.  It doesn’t want negative press about it.  The simple truth is that researchers are going to “follow the money,” according to Andre.  She, too, discusses the FDA’s regulation over ECT machines and how it is because ECT machines were in use before the FDA gained jurisdiction over medical devices in 1976 that its authority is limited, but that it was put into Class III which is defined as presenting “an unreasonable risk of injury or harm and cannot be made safe” (Andre).

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) gives a large amount of money to the Psychiatric Institute in New York State for mental health research and when it comes to ECT research money, according to Andre, the percentage is even greater.  She states that millions upon millions of dollars have been granted over the years to one investigator to study ECT—a Dr. Harold Sackeim (Andre).  The money automatically went to him for 20 years.  He spent his entire career promoting ECT.  However, while his research was being done, it was “in violation of federal law which requires disclosure of conflict of interest” (Andre).  Dr. Sackeim was receiving grant money and was a consultant for companies that make shock machines in America.  That was never disclosed and that is illegal (Andre).

Other New York ECT promoters who sit on a committee called the APA’s Task force on ECT, openly admit to the FDA their opposition to safely study ECT’s effect on the brain (Andre).  “They have successfully lobbied over a period of nearly two decades to prevent such a study by the FDA.  So it is not only that these men monopolize the research funding and decide the research agenda; they also work to actively prevent anyone but themselves from researching ECT,” Andre states (Andre).

Andre continues her argument by stating that brain damage can be seen in animals, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of patients and in autopsies of patients that have had ECT (Andre).   Propaganda that is fed to patients asserts that ECT rescues lives or prevents suicide.  Documented studies show this not to be the case.  My mother attempted suicide shortly after her treatments ended.  I didn’t know this until I interviewed her for this research paper. The most famous of examples of an ECT suicide victim is Ernest Hemingway who said, “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” (Electroshock Treatment and Brain Damage).

In conclusion, the public is being lied to regarding the effectiveness of ECT treatments.  Highly risky devices that have not gone through the rigorous FDA testing required of medical machines, including safety testing are being used on patients’ brains.  Doctors that don’t need any specialization in order to operate ECT machines are using them.  Massive amounts of electricity are being administered into the brains of patients causing dangerous grand mal seizures.  About 100,000 patients are being given this treatment a year in private hospitals. Funds are not being equally distributed in order that more research can be done on the horrific and damaging side effects of ECT.  Plenty of proof of brain damage from shock treatment is available when sought.  I end my paper with my original question.  Why are shock treatments still being given?
