'Shock Treatment' is Grievous Bodily Harm

East Grinstead, United Kingdom, July 27, 2007 --(PR.com)-- The highly controversial psychiatric ‘treatment’ method of electrically shocking patients, commonly known as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), has come under fire from an international psychiatric watchdog.

While ministers recently did a u-turn on the use of shock treatment for young people with a series of compromises, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has pointed to a study which it claims should herald the abolition of ECT.

The call for its abolition follows a study by world-renowned proponent of ECT, who in January did his own astonishing u-turn after decades of claiming the benefits of ECT. Harold Sackeim of Columbia University, whose name is referenced 94 times in the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ ECT Handbook, co-authored the study, which found the administration of ECT to patients permanently impairs memory, cognitive abilities and reaction time.

CCHR says the government watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which advises ministers on the safety and efficacy of treatments, should have brought this vital new study to the attention of ministers to prevent ECT being an option in the Mental Health Bill.

Sackeim’s research on ECT has also been extensively referenced by NICE. In the 2003 Systematic Review of the Efficacy and Safety of Electroconvulsive Therapy, which was commissioned by the Secretary of State for Health, Sackeim was referenced on 106 occasions, indicating a reliance on him as an expert concerning ECT.

ECT itself was conceived in a Rome slaughterhouse in the 1930s when psychiatrist Ugo Cerletti observed butchers incapacitating pigs with electric shocks prior to slitting their throats.

Brian Daniels, spokesperson for CCHR in the UK, said, “ECT has been cloaked in medical legitimacy for too long. It has all the marks of physical torture methods that might instead belong in the inventory of a KGB interrogator, rather than the inventory of a “medical practitioner.”

“Now that Harold Sackeim has done a complete u-turn, it’s time for NICE, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and ministers to do the same complete u-turn and abolish ECT as a so-called ‘treatment’ and label it for what it is: torture,” said Daniels.

Consultant psychiatrist Dr Bob Johnson is unequivocal about the use of ECT. “Eventually the psychiatric profession will acknowledge that giving healthy (if depressed) patients, epilepsy (electrically induced) will damage them well beyond the strictures of Hippocratic principles.”

And Dr Michael Corry, a consultant psychiatrist at the Institute of Psychological Medicine and Clane General Hospital in Ireland, says shock treatment should be banned and that it’s “…morally wrong to inflict brain damage.”

CCHR is an international psychiatric watchdog that has been in the vanguard of patients' rights since it was co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights.

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