Excerpted from information booklet written for CCHR: ELECTROSHOCK – PAIN AND FRAUD IN THE NAME OF THERAPY Why is electroshock (ECT) continually dogged by controversy? Why is it that women, the frail elderly and children are psychiatry’s main targets for ECT? Where is the true weight of public and scientific opinion? Who profits from ECT? … Read more
I have witnessed the damage electroshock can cause. I can truly say this so-called “treatment” is not what they claim. It is torture in disguise. I have two stories to tell so that others may be warned about this. When I was 9 years old, my mother had recently been diagnosed with Diabetes Type 2, … Read more
As a young child I loved to write. Even before I took my first college poetry class in 1980, I enjoyed writing in my diary and writing letters to people all over the world. I enjoyed reading diaries of people who lived long ago. Every year I traveled with my family to my grandparents’ home … Read more
I’m writing this story because I feel compelled to help others with my story. I don’t want to see others go through the unnecessary torture and pain I have endured throughout the last ten years of my life or more. My name is Jane Ellis. I am an electroshock survivor. I am now 32 years … Read more
In the late 1940s and early ‘50s, the heyday of electroshock, memory loss induced by ECT was considered to be its therapeutic effect. The distressed subjects conveniently forgot what was upsetting them, such as war traumas, child abuse, rape, betrayal, or family violence. [Janis, 1948] When electroshock made a comeback, it needed a new PR image, helped immensely by the administration of … Read more
The original theory of ECT was that seizures and mental disease could not coexist in the same brain. This justified the brutal act of subjecting a person to electric shock to the point of inducing a seizure, after which the patient would be more manageable and their behavior deemed more socially acceptable. (Piazzi, et al. … Read more
This brief will describe a representative sampling of the considerable documented evidence that ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) causes brain damage. The cited sources of information are publicly available medical journal articles of which abstracts can be found in the National Library of Medicine online database, with full texts from the publishers. ECT ECT is the process … Read more
A new book published in February 2019 claimed that famed actress, Vivien Leigh who starred in Gone with the Wind (1939) and A Street Car Named Desire (1951) had suffered from bipolar disorder.[1] However, Leigh, along with many other artists, were victims of psychiatric treatment, especially electroconvulsive therapy (electroshock, ECT) that not only failed but … Read more
My name is Kenny Fleischman. I am currently 30 years old. I underwent ECT, also known as electroconvulsive therapy, at the age of 21. I had a total of 30 rounds of electroshock at that time. What compels me to tell my experience is that I would never want anyone to go through what I … Read more
Excerpted from CCHR’s submission to the FDA opposing its 2015 proposal to reclassify the ECT device as a Class II low risk device. CCHR’s submission was submitted in March 2016. In May 2006, Harold Robertson and Robin Pryor writing in BJPsych, “Memory and cognitive effects of ECT: informing and assessing patients,” determined: “Data do not … Read more