Treatment, psychiatric electroshock

Pharmacologists speak of a drug s therapeutic index, the dosage ratio between the beneficial effect and the toxic effect. The first brain-disabling principle of psychiatric treatment reveals that the toxic dose is the therapeutic dose—that brain disability causes the seemingly therapeutic effect. This same principle applies to electroshock and psychosurgery. 

The entire question of testimonials for various treatments is a difficult and complex one. Quack cures, for example, often have avid supporters. Logan (1976), in his autobiography, described his many contacts with psychiatric treatment over the years, including earlier public testimonials for psychiatry. He expressed surprise that people are critical of electroshock treatment, which he found to be very benign. ... 

The most dramatic threat to shock treatment became known as the Berkeley ban. Ted Chabasinski, who had been subjected to electroshock as a child, organized a grassroots citizens movement in support of a referendum to ban ECT in Berkeley, California. After the proposition was overwhelmingly approved by the electorate, the psychiatric establishment, led by the APA, intervened and had the ban overturned in court. But the survivors could claim a partial victory—a so-called power outage of 41 days at Herrick Hospital, the city s only ECT facility, in the winter of 1982. 

What is needed To begin with, mental health professionals, physicians, and the public must become more skeptical, perhaps even cynical, and certainly more sophisticated about what psychiatric drugs and electroshock really do to the brain, mind, and person. Awareness of medication spellbinding and the brain-disabling principles of psychiatric treatment is key to this understanding. Psychiatric drugs do not cure mental disorders. Instead, their primary or essential effect is to cause brain dysfunction and compromise mental and emotional acuity. 

The final chapter continues the discussion of therapy and proposes 20 guidelines for working with very disturbed people without resort to psychiatric drugs, electroshock, or involuntary treatment. 

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