Why should Electrochock Treatment (aka ECT) be banned?

Very simply, electroshock destroys minds and kills. Woman and the elderly are the key targets for psychiatrists administering electroshock with the death rate among the elderly being as high as 1 in every 200. And in a 1993 Texas government report, it was found that one in 213 patients had died within two weeks of receiving electroshock. Many, many studies also document that electroshock creates irreversible brain damage and memory loss. The loss of memory and intellectual abilities which need memory to function are often devastating to the person treated with this violent practice.

Electroshock also has a documented sordid history of being used for torture and mind control, implanting ideas in people that are not their own and forcing them to operate off this.

Touted by psychiatrists as “scientific” and “therapeutic,” it is as sophisticated and beneficial as hitting someone over the head with a sledgehammer. ECT consists of 180 to 460 volts of electricity sending a current searing through the brain causing a severe convulsion or a grand mal seizure identical to an epileptic fit.

And when you are dealing with people who are vulnerable and in need of help, using electroshock on them is not only betrayal, it is criminal assault. Electroshock destroys lives. It should be banned.

Isn’t Informed Consent for Electroshock Treatment a sufficient safeguard? Shouldn’t patients have the “right to treatment?”

It should be realized that the only reason that “Informed Consent” for electroshock even exists is because CCHR and like-minded groups had it passed into law in the 1970’s against tremendous opposition from psychiatrists who continue to want unbridled power to do to patients as they wish.

If patients were truly informed about the dangers of ECT, there would no doubt be far less consent given. As one California psychiatrist pointed out, only the most self-destructive person would want brain-cell death and permanent mental dysfunction, which ECT creates. In practice, CCHR has found “consent” as a safeguard has not worked. People are routinely told bare-faced lies by psychiatrists about the so-called “safety” and “effectiveness” of electroshock. In a vulnerable state -desperate for relief and solutions- they agree to being shocked.

The fundamental issue is that electroshock treatment damages brains, memories, and personalities. It is not “treatment.” Even a five-year-old knows not to put his finger in an electric socket. Psychiatrists expect you to put your brain in one. No civilized society would approve of a baseball bat to the skull as treatment. The same standard should be applied to electroshock.

Electroshock should not be available as a choice, just as Thalidomide is not available to pregnant women. Psychiatrists who give it for a living have a financial incentive in saying that it is harmless. As such, it is up to the government to safeguard its citizens and to ban ECT.