Suicide, and Autopsy Findings

Many deaths were reported in association with ECT in the first few decades of use. An extensive autopsy series indicated that many suffered from trauma to the brain resulting in visible pathology (Impastato, 1957). Advocates for ECT have claimed the death rate is very small or nearly nonexistent but I have suspected that deaths are simply no longer reported. For example, I know of deaths of ECT recipients in the Baltimore-Washington, DC, area that have gone unreported. 

There has been some epidemiological confirmation of the probability of a significant death rate. A law passed in Texas in the early 1990s required the reporting of death within 2 weeks after ECT. From June 1993 through August 1994, 8 deaths were reported among nearly 1,700 patients subjected to shock treatment. Controversy surrounds causation, and critics of ECT attempted without success to obtain more autopsy details (Smith, 1995). 

Electroshock specialists almost never seriously consider the memory deficits of their patients. In case after case that I have evaluated for clinical or forensic purposes, I have been the first doctor to take the symptoms seriously, let alone to take a complete inventory of memory losses and ongoing mental difficulties. I have previously outlined a method for evaluating memory deficits from ECT (Breggin, 1979). 

The recent study by Sackeim et al. (2007) described earlier in the chapter should put to rest the question of whether or not ECT causes 

Squire and Slater s (1983) study, also omitted by the APA (1990b) task force, found that 7 months after treatment, patients reported an average loss of memory spanning 27 months. Squire, in a personal communication to me at the June 1985 Consensus Conference on ECT, explained that one patient lost the recollection of 10 years of her life. He told me that he felt it was not necessary to report this in his actual publication. 

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