"That is a dangerous book....": "Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy" by Kitty Dukakis and Larry Tye
"All that was left was to put a name to the new procedure. One assistant suggested electric shock; Cerlutti objected because it was already used for muscle contractions directly due to electricity. Ditto for electroconvulsion. Another aide proposed electroshake, which Cerlutti thought too scary. So he ended with electroshock..." --- pg 61. Ugo Cerletti is described by author Larry Tye as" electroshock's patron saint."
================================
"'It was love at first sight.'" --- pg 153. Dr. Charles Welch (Kitty Dukakis mechanic at Mass General) describing how he felt about ECT. He, to my knowledge, has never experienced any ECT treatments.
================================
"That is a dangerous book" is what I was told by someone close to me after describing the outrage and disgust I felt after reading Robert Whitaker's searing 2002 indictment of how the mentally ill have been mistreated in this country for centuries, "Mad In America".
And that same advice I give to you, turned on its head. "Shock" attempts to show its readers the benign usefulness and effectiveness of ECT (electroconvulsive therapy), but in this attempt has sickened me. First, the fact that coauthor Larry Tye could be so incredibly disconnected to the suffering caused by this medieval form of therapy shows the callousness that has plagued the psychiatric community since its inception. The examples of ETC's benefits, as described by those patients who gained relief from their severe depression, serve as counterweight to Tye's gross lack of concern over its costs. To take an example mentioned in the book, during the 40s and 50s heyday of the procedure, "four out of every ten patients at Rochester [NY] and other hospitals of that era suffered a serious complication -- a rate four hundred times higher than today [meaning present day] -- with most involving DISLOCATIONS or FRACTURES". (emphasis mine)
Yeah, I guess in the pre-anesthesia and muscle relaxant era, the fact that you had nearly a one in two chance of breaking a damn bone, at minimum, could give ECT a bad reputation.
============================
The following are quotes found in "Shock", some from Tye and some from other works quoted in the book:
----- From a chapter titled "Serendipity and Science", describing an early form of therapy:
"While its [ie "sleep therapy", a technique that put patients suffering mental illness to sleep, if you can call it that, for one to ten days using various drugs] use eventually was constrained by its death toll -- it killed ONE IN TWENTY PATIENTS -- it was a critical link in the progression of organic therapies." (emphasis mine)
----- Yes, but did is do any goddamn good, besides killing patients? Not addressed in the book.
-----Assorted quotes from the book that left me dizzy, and quite angry with the author's indifference to patients suffering:
"One patient was given 800 sessions."
"Dr. Lucio Bini, Cerlutti's collaborator in founding electroshock...described his approach of administering several sessions a day of shock....(as) Annihilation."
"ECT use among the young is more problematic.....partly for fear of harming....brains of children. It is also a reaction to experiements like the one....at New York's Bellevue Hospital [during the 1950s], with patients as young as THIRTY-FOUR MONTHS getting TWENTY TREATMENTS." (emphasis mine)
and...
"Thorazine did for psychoses what Viagra would do for impotence, educating America about an ailment as well as a hopeful new approach to treatment."
----- So, Larry, apparently you've never taken an antipsychotic, because believe me, when you're on Haldol the last thing you think about is getting a boner. It ain't happening, my friend. Thorazine and Viagra: fellow wonder drugs (as I retch).
RE ECT Statistics
"The upshot is that while in 1980 schizophrenia accounted for 16.5 percent of in-hospital ECT usage, by 1986 that number had tumbled to 6.5 percent, and today it almost certainly has slipped further." ----- "Upshot"? "(T)oday it almost certainly has slipped further"? Wow, pass the champagne! Hate to be a wet blanket, but I know that the author knows that ECT doesn't do a thing for schizophrenia besides potentially reducing the depression.
RE Forced ECT:
--"Georgia Power Cocktail": The termed used by the former superintendant of a hospital in Georgia to describe forced ECT, and who is quoted as saying that it was at one time "hospital policy to use shock treatment to insure good citizenship."
--"Robert Whitaker, author of the expose 'Mad In America', estimates that more than 1 million patients receive(d) forced electroshock' in the 1940s and 1950s."
--""In Illinois today, 91 percent of ECT patients consent to treatment. In California, it is 96 percent and in Texas 98 percent." Wow, so 9 percent of ECT's in Illinois are FORCED. And Tye chose to include that stat in his book. Did he go to the school that the Ben Stiller character in "Zoolander" dreamed of opening (the Derek Zoolander Center For Children Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good, Too)? And the numbers in Texas are skewed by the dozens and dozens of electric chair "Annihilations"/executions every year, I assume.
"'It's much more gratifying to work with a willing patient.'" -- sweet hearted Dr. Ben Liptzin of Baystate Health Systems. Sounds like a swell guy.
RE ETC used as torture:
"...(M)edia reports were pouring in [during the 60s] from Hungary, Russia, Australia, and Argentina of electroshock's use in real torture. In Canada...Dr. Ewen Cameron got CIA funds in the 1950s to run a series of brainwashing experiments. Without telling his patients they were guinea pigs, he used high-dose ECT, hallucinogenic drugs, sensory deprivation, and barbiturate-induced sleep to try to obliterate neurotic ideas..." ----- Hello, and welcome to Gitmo, you dirty Arab scum!
One more quote from the chapter dealing with what I'm sure will be termed "ancient history" by doctors and those patients who benefit from modern medical miracles:
"Sakel tried intentionally inducing such comas [a hypoglycemic coma induced through the injection of insulin] in schizophrenics, with SPECTACULAR RESULTS. Symptoms fully cleared in thirty-five of fifty test subjects and partly remitted in another nine, he announced in 1934." (again, emphasis mine) --- It is clear, looking backwards from present day, that Dr. Sakel was quite the liar. These numbers were likely almost completely fabricated. Curing schizophrenia (70% success rate) by inducing comas? Not bloody likely. The thing about this passage that irritates me is that there is no mention by Tye that these figures are obvious bullshit. The guy puts this in his book put doesn't mention that there is no way that they are truthful? He, according to the book jacket, spent fifteen years at The Boston Globe as an award winning journalist. Award winning journalist? Hey, I guess if Manilow can win an Emmy, then anything is possible.
==============================
----- Two sentences, one inch apart on the page opened before me:
"His [Randall McMurphy as played by Jack Nicholson in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"] last scene also would have won, for Worst Psychiatric Excess [that is, another Oscar], although all he did was lie on a gurney motionless and emotionless."
.....and....
"In its earliest days, shock treatment did resemble a torture chamber."
----- Sooooooo....which is it, Mr. Tye? Bad screenwriting or "torture"? One inch apart on page 90. Did this book need an (better) editor real, real bad? I think so.
==============================
RE Efficacy of ETC
"So how well does ECT work for its target population of severely depressed patients? It can offer immediate relief to three-quarters of them..." --- This quote is made in a book with a substantial Notes section. Strangely, there is no note to back up this claim. But trust me. it's horseshit. Complete horseshit.
"(A) study, published in 2005 and involving 131 depressed patients who said they were actively contemplating killing themselves, found that 38 percent stopped thinking about suicide after just one week of ETC..."
---- Because...I don't know...they couldn't think about anything besides not wetting their pants?
No, I've got it, it went something like this: Doc: So, feeling better? Thinking of killing yourself? Cuz if you are, we can hook you up to that car battery again. Patient: Wha....I'm sorry...who are you?....oh... Yes, I am never going to even think about killing myself again. Never, ever, ever. Just don't electrocute me again. Please, oh god. Doc: Thanks, Mrs.....(looks down at chart)....Ms. Smith....I'll mark you down as "showing tremendous improvement".
=============================
================================
"'It was love at first sight.'" --- pg 153. Dr. Charles Welch (Kitty Dukakis mechanic at Mass General) describing how he felt about ECT. He, to my knowledge, has never experienced any ECT treatments.
================================
"That is a dangerous book" is what I was told by someone close to me after describing the outrage and disgust I felt after reading Robert Whitaker's searing 2002 indictment of how the mentally ill have been mistreated in this country for centuries, "Mad In America".
And that same advice I give to you, turned on its head. "Shock" attempts to show its readers the benign usefulness and effectiveness of ECT (electroconvulsive therapy), but in this attempt has sickened me. First, the fact that coauthor Larry Tye could be so incredibly disconnected to the suffering caused by this medieval form of therapy shows the callousness that has plagued the psychiatric community since its inception. The examples of ETC's benefits, as described by those patients who gained relief from their severe depression, serve as counterweight to Tye's gross lack of concern over its costs. To take an example mentioned in the book, during the 40s and 50s heyday of the procedure, "four out of every ten patients at Rochester [NY] and other hospitals of that era suffered a serious complication -- a rate four hundred times higher than today [meaning present day] -- with most involving DISLOCATIONS or FRACTURES". (emphasis mine)
Yeah, I guess in the pre-anesthesia and muscle relaxant era, the fact that you had nearly a one in two chance of breaking a damn bone, at minimum, could give ECT a bad reputation.
============================
The following are quotes found in "Shock", some from Tye and some from other works quoted in the book:
----- From a chapter titled "Serendipity and Science", describing an early form of therapy:
"While its [ie "sleep therapy", a technique that put patients suffering mental illness to sleep, if you can call it that, for one to ten days using various drugs] use eventually was constrained by its death toll -- it killed ONE IN TWENTY PATIENTS -- it was a critical link in the progression of organic therapies." (emphasis mine)
----- Yes, but did is do any goddamn good, besides killing patients? Not addressed in the book.
-----Assorted quotes from the book that left me dizzy, and quite angry with the author's indifference to patients suffering:
"One patient was given 800 sessions."
"Dr. Lucio Bini, Cerlutti's collaborator in founding electroshock...described his approach of administering several sessions a day of shock....(as) Annihilation."
"ECT use among the young is more problematic.....partly for fear of harming....brains of children. It is also a reaction to experiements like the one....at New York's Bellevue Hospital [during the 1950s], with patients as young as THIRTY-FOUR MONTHS getting TWENTY TREATMENTS." (emphasis mine)
and...
"Thorazine did for psychoses what Viagra would do for impotence, educating America about an ailment as well as a hopeful new approach to treatment."
----- So, Larry, apparently you've never taken an antipsychotic, because believe me, when you're on Haldol the last thing you think about is getting a boner. It ain't happening, my friend. Thorazine and Viagra: fellow wonder drugs (as I retch).
RE ECT Statistics
"The upshot is that while in 1980 schizophrenia accounted for 16.5 percent of in-hospital ECT usage, by 1986 that number had tumbled to 6.5 percent, and today it almost certainly has slipped further." ----- "Upshot"? "(T)oday it almost certainly has slipped further"? Wow, pass the champagne! Hate to be a wet blanket, but I know that the author knows that ECT doesn't do a thing for schizophrenia besides potentially reducing the depression.
RE Forced ECT:
--"Georgia Power Cocktail": The termed used by the former superintendant of a hospital in Georgia to describe forced ECT, and who is quoted as saying that it was at one time "hospital policy to use shock treatment to insure good citizenship."
--"Robert Whitaker, author of the expose 'Mad In America', estimates that more than 1 million patients receive(d) forced electroshock' in the 1940s and 1950s."
--""In Illinois today, 91 percent of ECT patients consent to treatment. In California, it is 96 percent and in Texas 98 percent." Wow, so 9 percent of ECT's in Illinois are FORCED. And Tye chose to include that stat in his book. Did he go to the school that the Ben Stiller character in "Zoolander" dreamed of opening (the Derek Zoolander Center For Children Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good, Too)? And the numbers in Texas are skewed by the dozens and dozens of electric chair "Annihilations"/executions every year, I assume.
"'It's much more gratifying to work with a willing patient.'" -- sweet hearted Dr. Ben Liptzin of Baystate Health Systems. Sounds like a swell guy.
RE ETC used as torture:
"...(M)edia reports were pouring in [during the 60s] from Hungary, Russia, Australia, and Argentina of electroshock's use in real torture. In Canada...Dr. Ewen Cameron got CIA funds in the 1950s to run a series of brainwashing experiments. Without telling his patients they were guinea pigs, he used high-dose ECT, hallucinogenic drugs, sensory deprivation, and barbiturate-induced sleep to try to obliterate neurotic ideas..." ----- Hello, and welcome to Gitmo, you dirty Arab scum!
One more quote from the chapter dealing with what I'm sure will be termed "ancient history" by doctors and those patients who benefit from modern medical miracles:
"Sakel tried intentionally inducing such comas [a hypoglycemic coma induced through the injection of insulin] in schizophrenics, with SPECTACULAR RESULTS. Symptoms fully cleared in thirty-five of fifty test subjects and partly remitted in another nine, he announced in 1934." (again, emphasis mine) --- It is clear, looking backwards from present day, that Dr. Sakel was quite the liar. These numbers were likely almost completely fabricated. Curing schizophrenia (70% success rate) by inducing comas? Not bloody likely. The thing about this passage that irritates me is that there is no mention by Tye that these figures are obvious bullshit. The guy puts this in his book put doesn't mention that there is no way that they are truthful? He, according to the book jacket, spent fifteen years at The Boston Globe as an award winning journalist. Award winning journalist? Hey, I guess if Manilow can win an Emmy, then anything is possible.
==============================
----- Two sentences, one inch apart on the page opened before me:
"His [Randall McMurphy as played by Jack Nicholson in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"] last scene also would have won, for Worst Psychiatric Excess [that is, another Oscar], although all he did was lie on a gurney motionless and emotionless."
.....and....
"In its earliest days, shock treatment did resemble a torture chamber."
----- Sooooooo....which is it, Mr. Tye? Bad screenwriting or "torture"? One inch apart on page 90. Did this book need an (better) editor real, real bad? I think so.
==============================
RE Efficacy of ETC
"So how well does ECT work for its target population of severely depressed patients? It can offer immediate relief to three-quarters of them..." --- This quote is made in a book with a substantial Notes section. Strangely, there is no note to back up this claim. But trust me. it's horseshit. Complete horseshit.
"(A) study, published in 2005 and involving 131 depressed patients who said they were actively contemplating killing themselves, found that 38 percent stopped thinking about suicide after just one week of ETC..."
---- Because...I don't know...they couldn't think about anything besides not wetting their pants?
No, I've got it, it went something like this: Doc: So, feeling better? Thinking of killing yourself? Cuz if you are, we can hook you up to that car battery again. Patient: Wha....I'm sorry...who are you?....oh... Yes, I am never going to even think about killing myself again. Never, ever, ever. Just don't electrocute me again. Please, oh god. Doc: Thanks, Mrs.....(looks down at chart)....Ms. Smith....I'll mark you down as "showing tremendous improvement".
=============================
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