{"id":3038,"date":"2024-03-04T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/?p=3038"},"modified":"2024-07-14T05:38:09","modified_gmt":"2024-07-14T10:38:09","slug":"mental-health-watchdog-protests-u-s-psychiatrists-use-of-electroshock-procedure-violates-international-human-rights-standards-when-forcibly-administered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/2024\/03\/04\/mental-health-watchdog-protests-u-s-psychiatrists-use-of-electroshock-procedure-violates-international-human-rights-standards-when-forcibly-administered\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental Health Watchdog Protests U.S. Psychiatrists\u2019 Use of Electroshock; Procedure Violates International Human Rights Standards When Forcibly Administered"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Psychiatrists perform electroshock on patients, especially women and older people, despite risks of brain damage and permanent memory loss and no conclusive proof of effectiveness, experts say.\u00a0 Even young children are electroshocked in the U.S.<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

by CCHR National Affairs Office<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Calling for a ban on the psychiatric procedure of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, or \u201celectroshock\u201d), protesters demonstrated Thursday against psychiatrists attending the annual meeting of the American College of Psychiatrists (ACP) in New Orleans.\u00a0 The protest was organized by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a mental health watchdog organization that has long advocated for laws to ban ECT.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychiatrists administering electroshock generate an estimated $3 billion in revenue annually, despite significant risks to their patients of permanent memory loss and brain damage, as well as no conclusive proof of effectiveness, according to experts. CCHR calls on the ACP to actively take a stand against the procedure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The protest was followed by the opening of CCHR\u2019s traveling exhibit, \u201cPsychiatry: An Industry of Death,\u201d at a nearby venue.\u00a0 The exhibit documents the history of psychiatric fraud and abuse up to present day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ECT is a procedure in which psychiatrists shoot up to 460 volts of electricity through brain tissue, intentionally causing seizures that can last up to 30 minutes.\u00a0 It is reportedly used mostly on women and the elderly.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychiatrists still cannot explain how this procedure is supposed to work to alleviate depression or other behavioral issues.\u00a0 The voltage and number of sessions used is a matter of trial and error.\u00a0 While the use of ECT is not tracked across the U.S., a conservative estimate is that over 100,000 Americans are electroshocked annually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), electroshock can cause brain damage, cognitive impairment, permanent memory loss, prolonged or persistent seizures, worsening psychiatric symptoms, cardiovascular complications (including heart attacks), breathing complications and death.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new study has provided additional evidence of memory loss, finding that 61% of adults and 69% of teenagers who received electroshock\u00a0suffered memory impairment<\/a>\u00a0after the procedure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, patients are not always fully informed of these risks before consenting to the procedure, and psychiatrists can get a court order to perform ECT against a patient\u2019s will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPatients should not be exposed to such extremely serious, even life-threatening risks just because their psychiatrists don\u2019t know what else to do,\u201d said Anne Goedeke, president of the National Affairs Office of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights.\u00a0 \u201cThe procedure should be banned outright.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recently issued\u00a0guidance<\/a>\u00a0calling on U.N. member nations to ban all forced electroshock.\u00a0 \u201cInternational human rights standards clarify that ECT without consent violates the right to physical and mental integrity and may constitute torture and ill-treatment,\u201d the guidance says.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WHO and OHCHR also oppose any use of ECT on children and call for laws to be enacted to ban it.\u00a0 In the U.S., reports required to be filed in some states on the use of ECT reveal that children 5 years old and younger are given electroshock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although psychiatrists recommend electroshock for depressed patients who may be at risk for suicide, recent research has found no evidence that ECT is any more effective than sham ECT (general anesthesia but not the electric shock).\u00a0 Patients who received treatment with ECT had\u00a0no lower risk<\/a>\u00a0for suicide than mental health patients who did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Read, Ph.D., a professor of psychology, Irving Kirsch, Ph.D., associate director of the Program in Placebo Studies at Harvard Medical School, and psychologist Laura McGrath, Ph.D., conducted a comprehensive analysis of prior studies on ECT. They found that the quality of those studies was so poor that nothing could be concluded about any effectiveness of the procedure.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is\u00a0no evidence<\/a>\u00a0that ECT is effective for its target demographic \u2013 older women, or its target diagnostic group \u2013 severely depressed people, or for suicidal people, people who have unsuccessfully tried other treatments first, involuntary patients, or adolescents,\u201d they concluded.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychiatrists performing electroshock can greatly increase their income.\u00a0 It has been estimated that a psychiatrist spending just a few hours a week to do 20 ECT procedures can bring in an additional $300,000 per year.\u00a0 Electroshock rakes in an estimated $3 billion a year in the U.S. alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CCHR\u2019s\u00a0documentary<\/a>,\u00a0Therapy or Torture: The Truth About Electroshock<\/em>,\u00a0warns consumers about the serious risks of ECT. \u00a0To date, more than 134,000 people have signed CCHR\u2019s\u00a0petition to ban electroshock.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Psychiatrists perform electroshock on patients, especially women and older people, despite risks of brain damage and permanent memory loss and no conclusive proof of effectiveness, experts say.\u00a0 Even young children are electroshocked in the U.S. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Psychiatrists perform electroshock on patients, especially women and older people, despite risks of brain damage and permanent memory loss and no conclusive proof of effectiveness, experts say.\u00a0 Even young children are electroshocked in the U.S.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[29,93,44,108,28,58,36,21,148,207],"class_list":["post-3038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-muddy-river-newsletter","category-press-releases","tag-abuse","tag-ect","tag-elderly-abuse","tag-fda","tag-fraud","tag-human-rights","tag-side-effects","tag-suicide","tag-united-nations","tag-who"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6NMpC-N0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}