Uploaded on Jul 8, 2007
Diana Loper. "It only takes a minute to destroy a brain. At 24, Diana Loper was given electroshock for post-partum depression and an inability to sleep after the birth of her child. After 24 treatments, she was released in a far worse condition, and could no longer care for herself or her family . As a result, her husband divorced her and her child was taken away by the courts. This is her story: "My story is many stories. There are thousands. Over a hundred thousand persons per year receive ECT I don't even like to use the term therapy--this is only a procedure. "I had a premature child, post-partum depression, and sleep deprivation. The post-partum depression is, of course, what we call the baby blues, and the sleep deprivation was from having a very sick child. I was married to a preacher and we decided to go to a psychiatrist to talk about what was going on with me. This psychiatrist decided that I needed shock treatments. "I didn't go for everything they said but my husband did. The psychiatrist told my husband, 'Well, you know, she's very depressed, and all we have to do is put her to sleep. There will be a little bit of a jolt through her body, and she'll have a little convulsion. It will be like going to sleep. And then she'll wake up the next day and everything will be fine. She'll be happy again. She won't be depressed. 'I remember looking at that psychiatrist and saying, 'Let's get real here. What are you going to do to me? Are you going to wipe out all the bad that ever happened to me. . . ?' My husband then said, 'Now, honey, listen to me. You cry all the time. Let's try this procedure. It won't hurt. It will only take a minute.' "So, they gave me 24 shock treatments for my post-partum depression and sleep deprivation. If I had been allowed to go ahead and play this out and let it go through its natural course, I probably would have been alright. But young, new husband, new baby, away from home, you go to these people you supposedly trust. My husband signed for the treatments believing that this was going to do some good. God only knows how he thought that but that's what he thought. And so, I was shocked against my will. I was straitjacketed and forcibly shocked. "What happens with ECT is they give you a certain drug that puts you to sleep. Then, when you wake up, your grief is supposedly over. After this procedure had been given to me, I woke up in a room by myself and didn't know where I was or who I was because what this procedure does is it puts you on a euphoric high, a brain-damage high. They might as well just take a sledge hammer and knock you in the head with it because after a head injury you walk around like, what's going on? The world is wonderful. The world is fine. It will put you on this high. . . But six months after shock~, after your brain-damage high is over, you're suicidal. I did not go into the hospital because I was suicidal. After they got through shocking me, I was. "After the insurance money runs out, they will put you on the street. Well, they put me on the street. I had no way of starting life because they did no follow-up. . . "
The Coalition for the Abolition of Electroshock in Texas
Visit Dr. Breedings website.
More information on ECT
Original Footage by Mary Marvel
This video was produced by psychetruth.
Leonard Roy Frank's written testimony to FDA on ECT 1-2011
THE ELECTROSHOCK MACHINE IS AN INSTRUMENT OF INFAMY
My name is Leonard Roy Frank. I’m 78 years old, live in San Francisco and have been active in the struggle against electroshock for almost 40 years. In 1974 I co-founded the Network Against Psychiatric Assault (NAPA) and published The History of Shock Treatment, in 1978 and The Electroshock Quotationary, an e-book, in 2006. I am here today to urge the commission to recommend that electroshock devices not be reclassified from a “high-risk” to a “low-risk” category because these instruments of infamy can and often do cause tremendous harm.
I know this from having studied the professional literature on electroshock for many years, from having spoken with and read about hundreds of people who have been electroshocked, and from having undergone the procedure myself.
In 1963 I was forced to endure 85 shock procedures, 50 insulincomas and 35 electroshocks. As a result, my memory for the three most recent years of my life was obliterated. In addition, my high school and college educations were effectively destroyed. Every part of me – spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical – was less than what it had been. I believe I never recovered fully from these repeated brain assaults which rendered my life since then less abundant.
The brain is a terrible thing to damage, and brain damage is electroshock’s bottom line. The surest indicator of this brain damage is memory loss which is practically universal among survivors. But electroshock psychiatrists deny that electroshock causes brain damage.
The American Psychiatric Association’s Task Force Report, The Practice of Electroconvulsive Therapy: Recommendations for Treatment, Training, and Privileging (2nd edition, 2001) stated that “In light of the accumulated body of data dealing with structural effects of ECT, ‘brain damage’ should not be included [in the ECT consent form] as a potential risk of treatment.”
This is one of modern psychiatry’s biggest lies. The scientific evidence contradicts this claim. The best example of such evidence I’m familiar with is the 1957 report by psychiatrist David Impastato, a leading electroshock advocate who some believe introduced electroshock in the United States in 1940. In the largest and most detailed review of electroshock-related deaths ever published, Impastato studied 254 deaths, all but 40 from published reports, and found that “66 patients” died from “cerebral” causes. In other words, they died from electroshock-caused brain damage. There’s no mention of Impastato’s findings in the APA’s Task Force Report; nor is the study listed among the 1,200 articles in the Report’s reference section.
The telling remarks at a meeting of electroshock psychiatrists by another leading electroshock proponent supplies anecdotal support for the fact that the procedure causes brain damage. Psychiatrist Paul H. Hoch, a past commissioner of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, said “This brings us for a moment to a discussion of the brain damage produced by electroshock.... Is a certain amount of brain damage not necessary in this type of treatment? Frontal lobotomy indicates that improvement takes place by a definite damage of certain parts of the brain.”
Electroshock psychiatrists have had more than 70 years to prove that their procedure is “safe and effective,” and they haven’t been able to. During that time, with no moral or scientific justification, more than 7,000,000 people in the United States alone have been electroshocked. Even today more than 100,000 people a year in this country are being electroshocked, along with— according to one electroshock psychiatrist’s estimate — another 1 to 2 million people throughout the world. The time is now to call the psychiatric profession to account for its inhumanity and criminality, and the Food and Drug Administration is the place to begin. I say “criminality” because electroshock is rarely, if ever, administered with genuine informed consent: the absence of the brain-damage risk from the consent form makes the electroshock consent process entirely fraudulent. If the law considers touching another person without their consent an assault, then administering an electric shock with an electroshock device to another person without their genuine informed consent should be regarded as aggravated assault, a felony punishable by a term in a state prison.
Because it destroys memories and ideas, electroshock violates these hallmarks of American liberty: freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. This leads me to say, there is no place for electroshock in a free society, and no society where it is sanctioned or tolerated is justified in calling itself free.
If the body is the temple of the spirit, the brain may be seen as the body’s inner sanctum, the holiest of holy places. To invade, violate, and injure the brain, as electroshock unfailingly does, is a crime against the spirit, a desecration of the soul.
via Psychiatric Drug Facts with Dr. Peter Breggin:
electroshock picture credit: manictrader on photobucket
