Doctors of Deception: What They Don’t Want You to Know about Shock Treatment
By Linda Andre
This is the first history of shock treatment (ECT, or electroconvulsive
therapy) to consider the controversial procedure in social, legal, financial,
medical, and moral context, and the first ever written by a shock survivor.
Through the investigation of court records, medical research, FDA archives, and
other primary sources, Andre shows that claims of safety and efficacy made by
doctors who promote and profit from ECT are not supported by science or
evidence.
She reveals how the shock industry and organized psychiatry abused public trust
and waged a masterful, multi-decade public relations campaign to improve ECT's
"image," deceiving the media, the government and the public about its risks
while exploiting negative stereotypes of mental patients to silence survivors.
Andre is not only a writer of this history but a maker of it; she is a leader
in the ex-patients' movement and vividly describes the 30-year struggle of
organized ex- patients to inform others about the dangers of shock treatment.
The book includes many first person accounts of shock's permanent adverse
effects on memory and cognition.
Book
Review by Stefan P. Kruszewski, MD
