In this enlightened 21st Century, controversial electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is still being used in the UK. It’s controversial because it’s masquerading as therapy when it’s actually torture.
Torture is defined in the Criminal Justice Act 1988 as follows, “A public official or person acting in an official capacity, whatever his nationality, commits the offence of torture if in the United Kingdom or elsewhere he intentionally inflicts severe pain or suffering on another in the performance or purported performance of his official duties.”
Strip away the psychiatric mitigation and justifications, and look at matters from a humanitarian perspective. It is a likely outcome that severe pain or suffering will be the result of the ECT procedure which is known by the person who is acting in his official duties, that person being the psychiatrist.
Here’s one of the justifications; psychiatrists claim that sending up to 460 volts of electricity through the brain to produce a seizure will ‘reset’ or ‘reboot’ the brain. It’s a theory that’s never been proven. Furthermore, there’s evidence that ECT causes significant and irreversible brain damage.
Psychiatrists and their membership organisations will never admit to brain damage, organ failure or other physical damage following ECT as they would be hit with a series of lawsuits and prosecutions which would probably signal the end of the procedure.
Psychiatrist Richard Abrams from the US, co-owner of a company manufacturing ECT machines that are sold all over the world, admitted under oath to not knowing anything about how ECT works. Yet he wrote the standard text book on ECT which has the apparency of being both scientific and authoritative.
In further attempts to mitigate, psychiatrists claim the ECT procedure is ‘new and improved,’ and that it’s ‘safer,’ but that’s just marketing hype. Anaesthetics and paralysing agents can make ECT appear less barbaric but that’s only for the benefit of the person watching the torture. For the person being shocked, there’s no difference. The increased current flow that’s used in the ‘new and improved’ torture can kill brain cells by generating heat. Scans taken of ECT patients have shown scarring and brain shrinkage.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that psychiatrists continue the practice. Having harmed hundreds of people, they will justify their actions on the basis they’ve done it unabated for so long. It’s criminal assault, but psychiatrists call it ‘treatment’ or ‘therapy.’
There are calls for ECT to be suspended and reviewed, but that’s akin to calling for a suspension of torture. The only answer is to ban ECT and prosecute those who use it.
