A Long Controversy Surrounding ECT

The 1978 APA task force report labeled electroshock treatment as controversial. The 1985 Consensus Conference on ECT report stated, 

Since my 1979 book, I have hammered at the right of patients to know that ECT is a controversial treatment, and I have cited the previous quotations in medical-legal reports and testimony. Many survivors of shock treatment, such as David Oaks of MindFreedom and Leonard Frank, have made similar points. Perhaps as a result, the 1990 APA task force report said not a word about controversy. ECT is presented as if no one in the profession has ever criticized it. Psychosurgery remains the only treatment surrounded by more controversy than ECT, but it is used much less frequently (Breggin et al., 1994b). The two treatments are closely related in many ways. Electroshock can be understood as closed-head electrical lobotomy.  

Some human and animal autopsies reveal permanent brain pathology. 

Some patients have persisting spontaneous seizures after having received ECT. Patients having received many ECTs score lower than control patients on psychological tests of organicity, even when degree of psychosis is controlled for. 

In conclusion, there is considerable empirical evidence that ECT induces significant and to some extent lasting brain impairment. The studies cited above are but a few which suggest that ECT is potentially a harmful procedure, as indeed are most naturally occurring episodes of brain trauma resulting in concussion, unconsciousness and grand mal epileptic seizures. Accordingly, the continued use of ECT in psychiatry must be questioned very seriously, (p. 23) 

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