| The FDA has finally, finally, decided to BAN the electric shock devices (ESDs) used at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts, a residential school for people with autism and other developmental or mental disabilities. ESDs are devices that administer skin shocks in a form of “aversion therapy” for agitation and behavioral “issues.” School staff could trigger a shock to a child by using a remote control. This isn’t the electroconvulsive shock machine (currently in use) but a skin device machine that zapped children with electric current when they misbehaved. The FDA has finally realized (after 20 years) that these devices “present substantial psychological and physical risks and, in fact, can worsen underlying symptoms—while leading to heightened anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.” According to William Maisel, director of the FDA device center’s Office of Product Evaluation and Quality, “Since ESDs were first marketed more than 20 years ago, we have gained a better understanding of the danger these devices present to public health.” So we ask you, if it took the FDA 20 YEARS to figure out that torturing troubled kids with electric shocks to the skin was a bad idea, do we really want to leave it up to the FDA to figure out that the electroshock machine, still in use after all these decades, which administers up to 460 volts of electricity to the brain to produce a grand mal seizure, and which is currently being administered to children, the vulnerable and the elderly, is also an obviously bad idea? [UPDATED July 6, 2021] A federal appeals court overturned the FDA ban, stating that it was a regulation of the practice of medicine, which is outside the FDA’s area of authority. Approximately 20% of the center’s 300 patients are being treated with these harmful devices at any given time. The court’s decision to remove the FDA ban on electrochocking these children, was based on the fraudulent claim that electroshocking children is a medical procedure and that the FDA has no authority to rule on medical issues. The lie in this case is that electroshock is a “medical” procedure; it is not. It is a barbaric method of punishment and has no place in modern society. Sign the petition to ban electroshock here. |
Posts Tagged ‘ECT’
Take Action – Missouri Legislature
Wednesday, January 29th, 2020| Periodically we let you know the progress of various proposed legislation making its way through the Missouri General Assembly and suggest ways for you to contribute your viewpoint to your state Representative and state Senator. The Missouri General Assembly is the state legislature of the State of Missouri and is composed of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate. The General Assembly is responsible for creating laws for governing the State of Missouri. The Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo) are electronically available on this site: http://revisor.mo.gov/. You can find your Representative and Senator, and their contact information, by entering your 9-digit zip code here. The Second Regular Session of the 100th General Assembly convened on January 8, 2020, and will end May 15, 2020. This time we’d like to discuss two Joint Resolutions which we’d like you to write your legislators about. Please write from your viewpoint as an individual or professional, and not as a representative of any organization. Let us know the details and any responses you get. The full text of each Resolution can be found here: House Joint Resolution 105 Senate Joint Resolution 55 Check out our handy discussion about How to write to a legislator. If you are not a voting resident of Missouri, you can find out about legislation in your own state and write your own state legislators; also, we are looking for volunteers to monitor legislation in Missouri and the states surrounding Missouri — let us know if you’d like to help out. HJR 105 and SJR 55 Provides for parents’ exclusive right to control the upbringing of their children This constitutional amendment, if approved by the voters, declares that every parent has a fundamental right to exercise exclusive control over all aspects of their minor children’s lives without governmental interference, including, but not limited to, decisions regarding their minor children’s custody, upbringing, education, religious instruction, discipline, physical and mental health care, and place of habitation. We think this is a good idea because the psychiatric mental health care industry is known to interfere in parental rights regarding their minor children. For example: Parents of millions of schoolchildren worldwide have been told that their children have a “mental disorder” that requires them to be chemically restrained by powerful mind-altering, addictive and harmful psychiatric drugs; or even worse, electroshocking them when the drugs don’t “work.” Children are human beings who have every right to expect our protection, care, guidance, and the chance to reach their full potential. They will be denied this if they are trapped in the verbal and chemical strait-jackets of psychiatry’s invented labels, mind-altering drugs, and other harmful “treatments.” There has been a persistent lobbying effort, funded by pharmaceutical companies, to increase the number of psychiatric drugs prescribed to even more children. A universal mental health screening program is the stated goal of these lobbyists. Mental “screening” of school children aims to Leave No Child Unmedicated. Please express your personal concerns to your Missouri State Representative and Senator, along with your support for HJR 105 and SJR 55. |
Therapy or Torture? The Truth about Electroshock
Sunday, December 1st, 2019A Documentary that will Shock the World
| Therapy or Torture? The Truth about Electroshock is a hard-hitting exposé on the most barbaric psychiatric practice in use today. This gripping documentary provides compelling evidence of the brain damage and deadly effects of ECT (ElectroConvulsive Therapy). Ask anyone on the street about electroshock and they’ll probably tell you it’s a relic of a bygone era, something that has been banned for decades. Not so. Worldwide, about one million people a year — including pregnant women and children under the age of five — are subjected to electroconvulsive therapy. In fact, psychiatrists are now promoting the use of ECT as a solution for “treatment-resistive” patients, those who don’t respond to psychiatric drugs. So electroshock is back with a vengeance. Why does psychiatry have such a love affair with ECT despite the brain damage and devastation that it causes? The one-word answer: money. ECT is now a $5.4 billion dollar industry in just the US alone. The purpose of ECT is to induce a major seizure in the patient. There is abundant evidence that seizures can be brain damaging, no matter how they come about. Seizures cause acute as well as chronically damaging inflammatory reactions in the brain. Just as in epilepsy, brain inflammation is caused by ECT-induced seizures. Studies that use MRI and sophisticated spectography scans document significant inflammation of brain nerves after ECT. In other words, they show electroporation — the production of holes in brain cell membranes, leading to memory loss, cognitive loss, and other devastating adverse effects. Psychiatrists will tell you that the brain damage itself is what causes an apparent improvement in depression symptoms. In fact, in 1942 American psychiatrist Abraham Myerson said: “The reduction of intelligence is an important factor in the curative process. The fact is that some of the very best cures that one gets are in those individuals whom one reduces almost to amentia [feeble-mindedness]”. We think you might agree that an effective cure should involve an increase in intelligence, rather than a decrease. Download and read the CCHR booklet “The Brutal Reality – Harmful psychiatric ‘treatments’ – report and recommendations on the destructive practices of electroshock and psychosurgery.“ Visit BanECT.org to learn the truth about ECT and take effective action to end it. |
HOW MUCH EVIDENCE DO WE HAVE THAT ECT IS TORTURE?
Sunday, November 17th, 2019AN HOUR AND TWENTY-TWO MINUTES OF IT.
Shocking! “Therapy or Torture” The Truth About Electroshock documentary is premiering November 23rd, 2019. Watch the trailer now then scroll down to “Raise Your Voice” to sign the petition to Ban ECT!
https://www.cchr.org/ban-ect/
FDA Reclassification of Electroconvulsive Therapy Devices
Thursday, May 23rd, 2019A new rule by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) went into effect on 12/26/2018 that reclassifies certain uses of ECT machines from Class III (high risk) to Class II (moderate risk).
Although the FDA solicited comments regarding the use of ECT, many of which described the harm done by ECT and were against the reclassification of ECT devices, the FDA does not consider such comments to be valid scientific evidence, and basically ignored them.
Contrary to the psychiatric community’s position, the FDA is supposed to recognize “reports of significant human experience with a marketed device” as a form of valid scientific evidence.
The new rule is somewhat complicated, and has some “ifs, ands and buts” that require some explanation. Here is the actual rule:
The FDA reclassifies the electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) device from Class III to Class II for use in treating catatonia or a severe major depressive episode associated with major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder in patients age 13 years and older who are treatment-resistant or who require a rapid response due to the severity of their psychiatric or medical condition; and requires the filing of a premarket approval (PMA) application or a notice of completion of a product development protocol (PDP) for all other uses of ECT.
Practically speaking, Class III means that a device presents a high risk of illness or injury to the patient and requires a premarket approval or product development protocol. A PMA is documentation which demonstrates the safety and effectiveness of the device before it can be sold and used. A PDP is documentation which demonstrates the clinical evaluation of a device and the development of necessary information for marketing approval; it may not involve actual clinical testing.
Practically speaking, Class II means that a device presents a moderate risk of illness or injury to the patient, and may require special labeling. Powered wheelchairs, x-ray machines and condoms fall under this category. Special labeling for ECT machines includes warnings that “ECT device use may be associated with: Disorientation, confusion, and memory problems” and “When used as intended this device provides short-term relief of symptoms. The long-term safety and effectiveness of ECT treatment has not been demonstrated.”
While the FDA acknowledges that the individuals for whom ECT therapy may be prescribed are at significant risk for complications, they are effectively ignoring these complications at the urging of the psychiatric industry, and doing so with a lot of psychobabble and pseudoscience, and the expectation that putting warning labels on the devices is protection enough.
Here are some facts which the FDA does not want you to know
In the forty years that the ECT device manufacturers have had the device on the market they have never conducted a clinical trial to support its safety and efficacy from which they have profited.
The procedure administers up to 460 volts of electricity through the brain causing a grand mal seizure.
Adverse effects from ECT include: irregular heartbeat; heart attack; stroke; cognition and memory impairment [sometimes permanent]; dental or oral trauma and physical trauma; manic symptoms; prolonged seizures; worsening of psychiatric symptoms and death.
Based on a 0.3% death rate found with ECT administered in Texas, an estimated 300 people receiving ECT may die each year in the U.S. and 3,000 worldwide.
Claims that ECT is safe and effective are not supported by clinical science and its use remains a theoretical practice with no conclusive mechanism determined to prove how ECT works. We have repeatedly suggested that psychiatrists stick their finger into an electric wall socket to see how well that works. So far, we have no takers.
ECT is not a cure. There is a high failure (relapse) rate within six months of receiving ECT, requiring more electroshock that creates more damage. Called “continuation” and “maintenance ECT,” antidepressants and/or other psychotropic drugs continue to be administered — the very drugs said to have failed, “requiring” ECT. A person might as well smack their thumb with a hammer, since this will take their mind off their mental troubles with less permanent damage than smacking their brain with electricity. (We’re not actually recommending this! Please do not try this at home!)
We do, however, recommend that a person consult a competent, non-psychiatric medical doctor for a thorough physical examination to determine whether an underlying, undiagnosed and untreated physical problem is causing the mental condition.
Pregnant women are electroshocked as late as their third trimester, despite adverse events that include miscarriage, premature labor, stillbirth, fetal heart problems and malformations.
In some countries children aged six and younger (U.S., Australia, and Canada) are electroshocked, damaging their developing brain and body. Psychiatrists are continually pushing the boundaries on whom they can shock. One of the current efforts is called external Trigeminal Nerve Stimulation (eTNS), where an electric current is sent into the brains of children as young as 7 years old.
A 2017 published review of more than 90 ECT studies since 2009 showed they remain “methodologically flawed” and “Given the well-documented high risk of persistent memory dysfunction, the cost-benefit analysis for ECT remains so poor that its use cannot be scientifically, or ethically, justified.”
In 2005 and again in 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned against electroshocking children, and reported: “In addition to inappropriate use of medication, children with psychosocial disabilities in institutions around the world are subjected to other severe forms of inappropriate treatment such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, also known as electric shock therapy). WHO has stated that there are no indications for the use of ECT on minors, and hence this should be prohibited. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment has remarked that ECT without anaesthesia, muscle relaxant or oxygenation amounts to torture. However, monitoring efforts worldwide continue to uncover instances of ECT being administered to children and adolescents.”
The FDA and state and federal legislators must put patient protection above the financial interests of companies that have failed to conduct clinical trials and provide a PMA for 40 years.
Write your state and federal legislators and tell them to ban ECT. For more information go to http://www.cchrstl.org/ect.shtml.
Shock and Awe – the Latest Psychiatric Abuse of Children
Monday, May 13th, 2019Shock and Awe is a tactic based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze an enemy.
Now the psychiatric industry is introducing electrical “stimulation” of children’s brains as a socially acceptable gradient to just plain shocking them into good behavior.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved on April 19, 2019 a medical device for so-called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The prescription-only device, called the Monarch external Trigeminal Nerve Stimulation (eTNS) System from NeuroSigma, is for patients ages 7 to 12 years old who are not currently taking prescription ADHD drugs. It was originally developed at the University of California, Los Angeles, to reduce epileptic seizures. Research continues on using eTNS for epilepsy, depression, migraine, PTSD, and ADHD.
This device delivers an electric current to the brain (through the V1 branch of the 5th cranial nerve) with an electrode taped to the forehead. It costs about $900 to start, with additional costs for more of the electrode patches which are only used once each. It is not currently reimbursed by insurance.
While the exact mechanism of how eTNS is supposed to work is not known, one physical effect is apparently to increase blood flow in certain areas of the brain and decrease it in others. They recommend using it daily for up to four weeks before any significant changes are observed; we could not find any information about long-term effects or whether any changes are observed after treatment is stopped. It was clinically tested in 2017 in the U.S. for this FDA approval, paid for by a grant from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, on 62 children for four weeks. The most common side effects observed were drowsiness, an increase in appetite, trouble sleeping, teeth clenching, headache and fatigue.
Results were recorded during clinical testing by asking the child to answer questions on the ADHD Rating Scale (ADHD-RS) such as whether they have difficulty paying attention or regularly interrupt others. Ratings of ADHD symptoms on various rating scales are entirely subjective, as are the diagnostic criteria for ADHD.
A prior feasibility study in 2015 was performed with 24 children for 8 weeks, using the ADHD-IV Rating Scale. It did not establish the durability of treatment effects following discontinuation of treatment, either.
To be blunt, ADHD is a fraudulent “disease.” In 1987, ADHD was literally voted into existence by a show of hands of American Psychiatric Association members and included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V). Within a year, 500,000 children in America alone were diagnosed with this, and to expand the client base it has also been associated with Asperger syndrome and Autism spectrum disorder.
ADHD actually represents the spontaneous behaviors of normal children. When these behaviors become age-inappropriate, excessive or disruptive, the potential causes are limitless, including: boredom, poor teaching, inconsistent discipline at home, reading difficulty, tiredness, street drugs, nutritional deficiency, toxic overload, bullying, abuse, stress, and many kinds of underlying physical illness.
By making an ADHD diagnosis, we ignore and stop looking for what is really going on with the child. These children need the adults in their lives to give them additional attention and to find and treat the actual causes, rather than shock their brains to see if that “works.”
There are no workable ADHD drugs, either for children or for adults. This new “treatment” is supposed to be appealing because it does not use drugs, but guess what? They don’t know how it is supposed to work, either; and they haven’t tested it long enough to know the consequences of running an electric current into a child’s brain.
Aw shucks, no one denies that children can have difficult problems in their lives. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen them by restoring personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well-being. Psychiatric treatments are not workable; they are designed, with shock and awe, to overwhelm.
Press Release – CCHR STL Visits Missouri State Capitol
Friday, February 8th, 2019Jefferson City, Missouri – February 6, 2019
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz, has been vigilant in exposing the lack of science behind psychiatry’s diagnostic methods and treatments that, left unquestioned for years by authorities and insurance companies, led to soaring increases in both health care costs and the prescription of dangerous and addictive psychiatric drugs.
It is time for the Missouri legislature to put an end to this lucrative scam and thereby help protect our citizens. Instead put our citizen’s money into proven physical health care and education, where it will produce real results. An example of a real positive result would be: patients recovering and being sent, sane, back into society as productive individuals. The introduction and passage of legislation designed to curb psychiatric fraud and abuse can contribute much to this effort.
To this end, CCHR St. Louis once again visited the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City February 5 and 6, 2019, and set up a display in the Capitol Building, talking to legislators and their aides about fraud and abuse in the mental health care system.
Volunteers personally visited with many Representatives and Senators, distributing packages containing the CCHR documentary DVD “Making A Killing – The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging” (MAK) and explanatory materials about harmful electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and the over-drugging of foster children.
The MAK documentary exposes the problem of psychotropic drugs, the profits they generate and the harm they do. CCHR recommends investigating the link between psychotropic drugs and the sharp rise in violence and suicide.
Claims that ECT is safe and effective are not supported by clinical science and its use remains a theoretical practice with no conclusive mechanism determined to prove how ECT works. CCHR recommends outlawing this barbaric practice.
In Missouri as well as nationwide, there is a significant problem over-drugging foster care children with harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs. CCHR recommends legislation to develop explicit foster children’s rights.
Legislators welcome the contact, so contact them, let them know you appreciate what they do, and make specific suggestions to correct the egregious abuses of the psychiatric industry in Missouri. Subscribe to the CCHR STL newsletter so you receive our legislative take-action alerts.
The Truth About ECT
Friday, January 4th, 2019TruthAboutECT.org is a blog site created to bring about public awareness of the dangers of electroconvulsive therapy (also known as electroshock or ECT).
Most people don’t believe that electroshock is still being used in modern society. This is most likely because the mere idea of electroshock is so abhorrent that most people simply can’t believe it’s still being used.
Factually, ECT is one of the most brutal “treatments” ever inflicted upon individuals under the guise of mental health care. Yet approximately one million people worldwide, including an estimated 100,000 Americans, are given electroshock each year, including the elderly, pregnant women and children.
The Washington University in St. Louis psychiatrists at Barnes-Jewish Hospital give 2,000 shock treatments per year, including to pregnant women.
The articles on this website are written by those who have either experienced the damaging effects of ECT or those who are medical professionals who have seen the damage caused by it.
ECT is a Violation of Human Rights
On December 3, 2018, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of The Organization of American States published a Precautionary Measure calling for the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts to immediately cease electroshocking children as a disciplinary measure, emphasizing that electroshock is a gross violation of human rights.
A November, 2018 Supreme Court decision in Victoria, Australia ruled that the forcible use of electroshock treatment violates patients’ human rights, saying “People with mental illness are highly vulnerable to interference with the exercise of their human rights, especially their right to self-determination, to be free of non-consensual medical treatment and to personal inviolability.” While the decision reinforces that electroshock given without consent is a human rights violation, the entire practice of ECT is a human rights violation and should be banned.
If you would like to report a psychiatric abuse, please fill out the abuse reporting form by clicking here.
If you would like to write about your own horrifying electroshock experience, click here.
For more information about the devastating effects of ECT, click here.
Shocking New Psychiatric Abuse – Deep Brain Stimulation
Friday, December 21st, 2018Would you let a psychiatrist poke wires directly into your brain and turn on the current?
Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is a process where electrical shocks are delivered directly into the brain by wires inserted into holes bored into the skull.
The psychiatrists conducting research on DBS say that this “reflects a move away from the long-held view that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.”
In other words, some psychiatrists are now admitting that the chemical imbalance theory is bogus, and they are desperately trying to find other treatments, because too many people are now wise to the chemical imbalance fraud.
Unfortunately, DBS is just another harmful fraud, because “it’s unclear whether the stimulation can produce long-lasting changes,” and “Despite the widespread use of DBS in clinical and research applications, the mechanisms by which focal brain stimulation modulates network activity to produce complex behavioral changes remain largely unknown.”
In response to this alarming and abusive “therapy” the Citizens Commission of Human Rights calls for victims to report abuse suffered during this or any other psychiatric treatment.
No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable. Unfortunately, not only do psychiatrists not understand the etiology (cause) of any mental disorder, they cannot cure them. In effect, psychiatrists are still saying that mental problems are incurable and that the afflicted are condemned to lifelong suffering.
Psychiatric treatments such as DBS, however, are unworkable and dangerous, and while they may temporarily mask some symptoms they do not treat, correct or cure any physical disease or condition; and by calling this a “treatment” they preclude finding out the real underlying causes of the condition and treating that with real, workable medical therapies.
New high-tech “treatments” for the brain will continue to be used to create the appearance of scientific progress, but in the end, psychiatry will be no closer to identifying any causes or effecting any cures; instead, their betrayal and brutality in the name of mental health continues. Psychiatry has proven only one thing — without the protection of basic human rights, there can only be diminished mental health.
Persons in desperate circumstances must be provided proper and effective medical care. The correct action on a seriously mentally disturbed person is a full, searching clinical examination by a competent medical, not psychiatric, doctor to discover and treat the true cause of the problem.
Click here for more information about the brutal reality of abusive psychiatric practices such as electroshock, deep brain stimulation, and psychosurgery.
Psychiatry: An Industry of Death
Thursday, November 29th, 2018Unrestrained, the psychiatric industry continues to harm in the name of help.
Only public disclosure of their criminal practices and determined action by individuals has effected change.
What has psychiatry done to earn the label “An Industry of Death“?
It is an answer best explained from the perspective of psychiatry’s 200-year history and the grave impact psychiatry has had on society today. Since the early days, when psychiatrists chained, flogged, starved or tortured their patients into total submission, little has changed. Then, as now, the goal was the subjugation of the individual, not to cure madness. The brutal treatments psychiatry evolved and still use to this day — electroshock therapy, psychosurgery and debilitating drugs — stand testament to that fact.
After psychiatry moved beyond its asylum walls and into society, came the truly disastrous results. In today’s psychiatry, motivated by its mission to “follow the money,” to quote a contemporary president of the American Psychiatric Association, you are witnessing a profit-driven, corrupt industry that leaves death and destruction in its wake.
Strong words, but based on cold, hard facts. Facts you need to know.
Consider the following
- Psychiatry monopolizes international mental health and demands hundreds of billions of dollars from governments each year for its services.
- Insurance in the United States alone pays out $72 billion in mental health costs annually.
- International psychiatric drug sales total in the range of $76 billion per year.
What are governments and societies getting in return?
- By their own admission, psychiatrists do not know how to cure a single mental problem.
- They do not know how their treatments affect patients.
- According to one study, psychiatric treatment scored a 99% failure rate in patient recovery.
- In the last 40 years, nearly twice as many Americans have died in government psychiatric hospitals as American soldiers killed in battle in all wars the United States has fought since 1776.
- More than 20 million children worldwide are on prescribed psychiatric drugs known to cause violence, psychosis, hallucinations, suicide, homicide, strokes, diabetes, heart attacks and death for alleged disorders that have never been scientifically proven to exist.
- Antidepressant “wonder drugs” are so widely prescribed that more than 154 million people worldwide have taken Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants. These drugs are under fire by drug regulatory agencies, not only for their potential to create violence and suicidal impulses, but because drug trials have found they perform no better than placebos (sugar pills).
- The number of American seniors aged 65 who receive ECT (electroconvulsive therapy, or electroshock) is more than three and a half times that of those aged 64. Why? Government health insurance for senior citizens becomes available at 65.
- The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported grievous damage from electroshock — patients sustaining severe burns, pregnant women suffering miscarriages and even death.
- Yet while almost half of the elderly who receive ECT die within two years, psychiatrists continue to electroshock many helpless victims throughout the world, killing many. More than two-thirds of ECT victims are women.
- Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University in St. Louis psychiatrists give 2,000 electroshocks per year to hapless victims.
Find Out! Fight Back!
If psychiatry is destructive and fraudulent to this extent, how has it become so entrenched in society?
To find out, and for more information about psychiatric fraud and abuse, watch the CCHR documentary Psychiatry: An Industry of Death.
