Electroshock Survivors and Advocates Testify before FDA
Advisory Committee: Don't Reclassify ECT Machines
On Jan. 27, 2011, Daniel Fisher, and several other mental health
consumers braved the winter storm and testified before the FDA Neurological
Device Panel against downgrading the classification of electroconvulsive therapy
(ECT) machines from Class III to Class II. We were successful at this stage,
because the panel voted 10 to 8 to retain the Class III classification of ECT
devices!
ECT Survivors and Advocates Respond to FDA Decision on ECT Machines -
January 27-28, 2011
Speakers in this video include; Loretta Wilson, Dorothy Dundas,
Vince Boehm,
Donald Johnson, Kendrick Moxon, John Breeding.
ECT Studies
"The Effectiveness of Electroconvulsive Therapy: a Literature
Review." By John Read and Richard Bentall. Epidemiologica e Psychiatria
Sociale 19:333-347. (2010). Concludes that the short-term gains of ECT do not
justify its associated brain damage, memory loss, cognitive deficits and
increased risk of death.
Click here to read
the study (PDF, 164KB, 15 pages)
“The Cognitive Effects of Electroconvulsive Therapy in Community Settings.” By
Harold Sackheim et al. Neuropsychopharmacology, pp. 244-254. (2007) "This study
provides the first evidence in a large, prospective sample that adverse
cognitive effects can exist for an extended period and that they characterize
routine treatment with ECT in community settings."
Click here to read the
study (PDF, 161KB, 11 pages)
Linda Andre's book is both a powerful memoir of her own experience as an
ECT "patient" and a documented account of the underbelly of the 'shock
industry.' It raises profound questions about ECT that both psychiatry and
the National Institute of Mental Health--if they want to be honest with the
American public--desperately need to address. -- Robert Whitaker, author
of Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment
of the Mentally Ill [Book Review] [Purchase
Doctors of Deception]
Resources compiled by Leonard Roy Frank, leading authority on
electroshock:
