Breaking News in ECT Research Shock Treatment Causes Suicide

MORE BREAKING NEWS IN ECT RESEARCH SHOCK TREATMENT CAUSES SUICIDE 

ECT is frequently justified as treatment of last resort in cases at high risk for suicide. But research uniformly shows that ECT has no beneficial effect on the suicide rate. Indeed, the most thorough study available, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2007, found an overall increased rate of suicide in patients previously given ECT (Munk-Olsen et al., 2007). In addition, patients treated with ECT in the past week had a greatly increased risk of suicide compared with other patients (RR = 4.82, 95% Cl 2.22-10.95) (p. 437, emphasis added). 

The authors are proshock and minimized the importance of their results concerning increased suicide, not even mentioning it in the title. Furthermore, they failed to make clear that this data wholly contradicted the main justification for giving shock treatment that it is supposedly the quickest and most effective way of preventing acute suicidal activity. Instead, without evidence the authors repeated the old saw that suicidal intent in patients with depression is rapidly relieved by ECT (p. 438). 

Munk-Olsen et al. (2007) based their observation on ECT-induced suicidality on a review of all inpatient admissions to a Danish hospital 

I have rarely seen so much outright fabrication in the psychiatric literature as I have seen in regard to ECT and lobotomy (for more details, see Breggin, 1979, 198 la b, 1982). Perhaps because these treatments are so violent and devastating, the doctors who perpetrate them, much like other perpetrators of violence (Breggin, 1992a), are especially prone to hide or to lie about the harmful effects of what they are doing. 

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