"Are We Really Okay with Electroshocking Toddlers?"

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"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." -- C.S. Lewis

Psychiatry's "shock doctrine" is quite literally electroshock, and its latest victims are - I'm not kidding - young

children.

On January 25, 2009, the Herald Sun, based in Melbourne, Australia, reported, "Children younger than four

who are considered mentally disturbed are being treated with controversial electric shock treatment." In

Australia, the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is increasing, and the Herald Sun's report on "Child Shock

Therapy" stated that last year "statistics record 203 ECT treatments on children younger than 14 -- including

55 aged four and younger."

Many Americans think that ECT has gone the way of bloodletting, but it continues to be regarded by

American psychiatry as a respected treatment, especially for patients who are "treatment resistant" to drugs.

Though ECT for young children is nowhere near as common as for adults, most states in the U.S. do not

prohibit ECT for kids. California does prohibit ECT for children under the age of 12 but allows children

between 12 and 15 to receive ECT if three psychiatrists are in favor of it.

You might think that before any child receives a series of 70 to 170 volts of brain zappings and is thrown

into epilepsy-like seizures, every other nontraumatic therapy would have been attempted. You might think

that before using ECT, in addition to trying every type of psychotherapy, there would also be an exhaustive

effort to find a therapist with whom a kid might genuinely connect. You might think all this, but you would be

wrong.

It is not unusual for psychiatrists to simply prescribe one drug, then another drug, then several drug

combinations (called "cocktails"), and if those fail, recommend ECT. The disproportionate use of ECT on

women, especially older women, once made it a feminist issue, but I heard no feminist opposition when Kitty

Dukakis recently came out positively about her own ECT. Psychiatry is well aware of its historical bad press

about ECT, including Sylvia Plath's nightmarish ordeal, so today ECT is far more pleasant to observe. Patients

are administered an anesthetic and a muscle relaxant prior to ECT so they don't writhe in agony as seizures

are induced. However, the effects on the brain have not changed. There are various modern ECT techniques.

However, the scientific reality is that for all of these techniques, without evidence of any brain malignancy, the

brain is damaged. Neurologist Sidney Sament describes the process:

"After a few sessions of ECT the symptoms are those of moderate cerebral contusions . . . Electroconvulsive therapy in effect may be defined as a controlled type of brain damage produced by electrical means . . . In all cases the ECT 'response' is due to the concussion-type, or more serious, effect of ECT. The patient 'forgets' his symptoms because the brain damage destroys memory traces in the brain, and the patient has to pay for this by a reduction in mental capacity of varying degree."

In January 2007, the journal Neuropsychopharmacology published an article about a large-scale study on the

cognitive effects (immediately and six months later) of currently used ECT techniques. The researchers found

that modern ECT techniques produce "pronounced slowing of reaction time" and "persisting retrograde

amnesia" (the inability to recall events that occurred before the traumatic event) that continue six months after

treatment.

While ECT proponents admit to collateral damage, especially memory loss, they claim that it is an effective

treatment. However, a Kitty Dukakis testimonial is not exactly science. With respect to preventing suicide, the

Journal of Affective Disorders in 1999 ("Retrospective Controlled Study of Inpatient ECT: Does it Prevent

Suicide?") reported, "We failed to demonstrate that ECT had prevented suicide in hospitalized patients."

Longtime ECT critic, psychiatrist Peter Breggin, in the International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine in 1998

("Electroshock: Scientific, Ethical, and Political Issues"), reported that at establishment psychiatry's "Consensus

Conference on ECT" in 1985, ECT advocates were unable to come forth with one controlled study showing

that ECT had any positive effect beyond four weeks, and that many other ECT studies showed that it had no

positive effect at all. The heretical Breggin added, "That ECT had no positive effect after four weeks confirms

the brain-disabling principle, since four weeks is the approximate time for significant recovery from the most

obvious mind-numbing or euphoric effects of the ECT-induced acute organic brain syndrome." Breggin's

"brain-disabling principle" is that even when ECT does "work," it works only temporarily -- the same way that

a blow by a sledgehammer or an acid trip might temporarily disconnect one from the reality of one's life and

the sources of one's emotional pain.

Psychiatry will always find celebrities such as Kitty Dukakis who swear by ECT, but the American public

rarely hears about those celebrities who have cursed their ECT. In Papa Hemingway, A. E. Hotchner recounts

the sad end to Ernest Hemingway's life. Hemingway became extremely depressed, was medicated and

ultimately given ECT; but he became even more depressed and complained about the effects of the

electroshock, "Well, what is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and

putting me out of business?" In 1961, after a second series of ECT, Hemingway used his shotgun to commit

suicide.

If you feel sorry for Hemingway, then what kind of emotional reaction do you have upon discovering that

last year 203 Australian children -- including 55 aged four and younger -- received ECT?