Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Sacramento Warns that ECT Can Cause Permanent Amnesia, Brain Damage and Death

CCHR Sacramento issues warning on dangerous, sometime lethal effects of ECT as more people seek help handling stress from Covid 19.

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES, March 3, 2021 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) of Sacramento issued a warning today about the brutal dangers of electroshock therapy (ECT) in an effort to ensure that anyone seeking help to handle stress from the threat of Covid-19 and the Quarantine have adequate data to protect themselves.

“Headlines bombard us about the rising incidence of depression and we fear that the number of people ‘treated’ with electroshock therapy will likewise increase. People need to know how dangerous ECT actually is,” said Jim Van Hill, executive director of CCHR Sacramento. “Many don’t even know that electroshock therapy is being used today.”

1.4 million people worldwide, including an estimated 100,000 Americans, are electroshocked each year, including elderly, pregnant women and children.[1] Many are involuntary patients or had ECT forced on them.[2]

This brutal “treatment” sends up to 460 volts of electricity[3] through the brain, inducing a grand mal seizure. To give you a comparison, 460 volts is enough electricity is to power five stadium lights.

The damage resulting from that much electricity coursing through a person’s brain is staggering. According to research, at least one-third of patients have experienced permanent amnesia.[4] A safety study conducted by the FDA found significant risks: cognitive and memory dysfunction, brain damage, and death.”[5]

Unlike psychiatrists, neurologists actually do everything they can to prevent seizures in epileptics to prevent brain damage. In CCHR’s documentary “Electroshock – Therapy or Torture,” neurologist Ken Sharlin points out that “Having recurrent seizures potentially reduces the life span of that individual. It has an impact on mortality.”

In July 2018, the UN Human Rights Council report on “Mental health and human rights” called on governments to recognize that forced psychiatric treatment, including ECT, are “practices constituting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment….”[6]

In an attempt to quell public outcry over ECT, psychiatrists initiated a PR makeover. They changed the name from electroshock therapy to “electroconvulsive therapy” and added anesthetics and paralyzing agents to obscure their patients’ writhing convulsions and screams. ECT is actually more dangerous than ever because the drugs and anesthesia raise the seizure threshold. As a result, much more electricity is needed to induce a convulsion resulting in more brain damage. A 2006 study reported that “newer methods of ECT have not resulted in an appreciable decrease in adverse effects.”[7]

Where has the FDA been in all this? They have never required clinical studies proving electroshock is either safe or effective -- despite being used for more than 80 years.[8] They reduced the age limit from 18 to 13 for certain “disorders” and reasserted that they will not regulate how the devices are used by psychiatrists, opening the door for them to electroshock anyone with impunity. Perhaps this appalling irresponsibility can be explained by the fact that 45%, or $2.4 billion of the FDA’s budget is paid for by industry user fees.[9]

“We cannot stand by and watch as thousands of women, children, the elderly or any person are brutalized by electroshock,” said Van Hill. “It’s time to put an end to this barbarism.”

Arm yourself with the facts about ECT. Watch the documentary “Electroshock – Therapy or Torture” at https://www.cchr.org/ban-ect/ and get more data at cchrint.org.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is a nonprofit mental health watchdog, responsible for helping to enact more than 180 laws protecting individuals from abusive or coercive practices. CCHR has long fought to restore basic inalienable human rights to the field of mental health, including, but not limited to, full informed consent regarding the medical legitimacy of psychiatric diagnosis, the risks of psychiatric treatments, the right to all available medical alternatives and the right to refuse any treatment considered harmful.

Inspired by author and humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard who wrote extensively on the human rights violations of psychiatrists, CCHR was co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Professor of Psychiatry the late Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse.


References

[1] Vabren Watts, “Psychiatrists Discuss Benefits, Risks of ECT,” Psychiatric News, 15 Jun 2015, http://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.pn.2015.6b16?trendmdshared=.

[2] “Documented Facts and Statistics about Modern Electroshock, Citizens Commission on Human Rights International,” https://www.cchrint.org/electroshock/

[3] Gary Null, PhD, “The Hidden Side of Psychiatry,” http://scribd-download.com/4659536-the-hidden-side-of-psychiatry-gary-null-ph-d_58c9f4a1ee34352a775d04e7_pdf.html

[4] Harold Robertson, Robin Pryor, “Memory and cognitive effects of ECT: informing and assessing patients,” Advances in Psychiatric Treatment May 2006, 12 (3) 228-237; DOI: 10.1192/apt.12.3.228, http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/12/3/228.full.

[5] NEUROLOGICAL DEVICES PANEL, CENTER FOR DEVICES AND RADIOLOGICAL HEALTH MEDICAL DEVICES ADVISORY COMMITTEE, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, pp 148-149, 27 Jan 2011

[6] “Mental health and human rights: Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development,” Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General, Human Rights Council, 10-28 Sept. 2018, p. 14, point 46

[7] Robertson and Pryor, op. cit.

[8] Citizens Petition filed with FDA Commissioner, August 2016.

[9] https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/fact-sheet-fda-glance

Media Coordinator
Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Sacramento
+1 916-447-4599
mary@cchrca.org