ECT

BACKGROUND At the APA annual convention in San Francisco in May of this year, Chad Puffer, DO, of the Mayo Clinic, presented a poster display titled ECT Use in Adolescents at the Mayo Clinic. The poster was reported by Caroline Cassels of Medscape.com, a month later (ECT in Kids: Safe, Effective, Robust and …Underutilized), and drew critical comment a week later (July 2) from Kelly Patricia O’Meara of CCHR International. I didn’t spot any of this until last week, when it came up on the Twitter feed from DxRevision Watch and Peter Kinderman. ...

Courtesy of Talla Trialogue on Twitter, I recently read an article in journal.ie on this topic. Kathleen Lynch, Minister of State for Disability, Equality, Mental Health and Older People, has reportedly stated that “…the law will be changed so that unwilling patients will no longer be forced to receive ECT.” At present, if an individual refuses ECT, his refusal can be overridden by the signatures of two psychiatrists. However, not everyone is in favor of the ban on forced ECT. There’s an article by Marie Feely, Proposed ban on Involuntary ECT criticized published in irishmedicalnews in January 2012. The article reports on a survey of consultant psychiatrists published in December 2011. Ms. Feely writes: ...

BACKGROUND As I suppose everyone knows by now, psychiatry has been on the receiving end of some very serious criticism in recent years. The criticism has come from many sources, including: survivors of psychiatric “treatment,” non-psychiatric mental health practitioners, journalists, the general public, and even from some psychiatrists themselves. The content of the criticisms has been equally varied, and includes: that the concept of mental illness is fundamentally spurious and devoid of explanatory significance; that psychiatric “treatment” (i.e. drugging people) is ineffective, physically damaging and disempowering; that psychiatry has forged and continues to maintain corrupt and corrupting relationships with the pharmaceutical industry with regards to the peddling of drugs and the hijacking of research for commercial ends; etc… ...

I’ve just come across a strange article on Mad in America. It’s called Researchers look at therapeutic benefits of ketamine. You can see it here. It doesn’t identify an author, but it’s from the University of Manchester. The opening paragraph says: "The largest trial into the use of Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) in the UK in more than 30 years will look into how the use of the Class C drug ketamine might reduce the side effects of ECT for those being treated for severe depression." ...

DELICATE THINGS REQUIRE DELICATE HANDLING When I was a teenager, one of my hobbies was making small transistor radios. It sounds complicated, but is well within the reach of an average 15-year-old. You get some magazine articles, learn how to read a circuit, and learn how to use a soldering iron. A transistor is a small device – about half the size of a pencil eraser – with three wires coming out of it. In building a radio receiver, the transistors have to be soldered to other devices which are in turn soldered to other devices, etc… The soldering iron is plugged into a wall outlet, but no mains electricity reaches the tip of the iron. However, tiny eddy currents can circulate in the tip, and although they are only of the order of milliamps, they can burn a transistor in seconds. What you have to do is unplug the iron from the socket, make the joint with the tip’s retained heat, and then replug the iron to have it ready for the next joint. The point being that delicate things require delicate handling, and that electricity can be very destructive. ...