File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_2000/anarchy-list.0012, message 63


From: "David James" <shddemon-AT-concentric.net>
Subject: Re: Fw: Forced Electroshock of 25 yr old planned in NY
Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 23:22:42 -0800



----- Original Message -----
From: "danceswithcarp" <dcombs-AT-bloomington.in.us>
To: "David James" <shddemon-AT-concentric.net>;
<anarchy-list-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2000 5:32 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: Forced Electroshock of 25 yr old planned in NY


> At 11:57 PM 12/6/00 -0800, you wrote:
>
> >A 25-year-old is going to be given forced electroshock here:
> >
> >
> >If you are near this center please protest locally...
> >If not please call the people mentioned below..
> >hopefully we can avert this fascist bullshit...
> >
> >Let's try to save Adam Szyszko.. No one should have to go through this
shit.
> >
> >   First they came for the "lunatics"
>
>
> Duh.  Do you just sign onto every loopy crusade that happens by,
> Dave?   Even more to the point is do you expect us to?

You can do whatever you want.

I was institutionalized at 16 (in 1995) and saw with my own eyes how fucked
up psychiatry is... It's not just another "loopy crusade" to me..
antipsychiatry is my fucking life. I have been an antipsychiatry activist
since 1998 and
an anarchist since early this year. If anything would be a "loopy crusade,"
it would be fighting for your half-assed,
coercive "anarchy"

>
> Electroshock is a very valuable tool in treating serious depression and
> certain psychotic conditions.  Believe it or not, Dave--I can call you

And the State is a very valuable tool for keeping criminals off the street.
And capitalism is a great idea for rewarding innovation.
Try reading something written by someone besides Dr. Max Fink (one of
the main promoters of shock, he wrote "Electroshock: Restoring the
ind")  -- who has a financial
interest in Somatics, Inc. They manufacture the Thymatron, one of the most
popular electroshock
machines.

ECT is actually worse today than it was in the past. For the brain, anyhow..
Fractures from ECT-induced seizures
stopped with the introduction of muscle relaxant drugs into the procedure.

Check out www.ect.org and www.mindfreedom.org.. I will answer your questions
below with quotes from
"Toxic Psychiatry" by Peter Breggin. (pub 1991, St Martins Press) Chapter 9:
"Shock treatment is not good for your brain"

> "Dave," can't I?--the treatment isn't like the treatment in "One Flew Over
> The Cuckoo's Nest" and I'm not really sure it has been that way for over
90
> years.  First off, it isn't done while a person is conscious.  Secondly it
> is not the administration of massive volts of electricity.

90 years.. did you just make that up?

"As a neurologist and electroencephalographer, I have seen many patients
after ECT,
 and I have no doubt that ECT produces effects identical to those of a head
injury.
 After multiple sessions of ECT, a patient has symptoms identical to those
of a retired,
 punch-drunk boxer.... After a few sessions of ECT the stymptoms are those
of moderate
 cerebral contusion, and further enthusiastic use of ECT may result in the
patient functioning
 at a subhuman level. Electroconvulsive therapy in effect may be defined as
a controlled type
 of brain damage produced by electrical means."
                           -- Sidney Samant, M.D., Clinical Psychiatry News,
March 1983

"Electroshock ... involves the passage of an electrical current through the
brain of the patient to
 produce a grand mal or major epileptic seizure... The shock induces an
electrical storm that
 obliterates the normal electrical patterns of the brain... typically the
treatment is given three times
a week for a total of at least six to ten sessions. After several sessions
of shock, the patient awakens
in a few (or sometimes many) minutes in a state of apathy and docility.
There will be some memory
loss and some confusion and often a headache, stiff neck, and nausea. As the
course of shocks progresses,
the patient's apathy, memory loss, and confusion increase. Judgement and
general mental function become
impaired. Sometimes the patient becomes temporarily giddy or artificially
high. This generalized mental and
emotional dysfunction is called an acute organic brain syndrome or
delirium - the brain's typical response to
severe stress or damage."
  Peter Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry pp 195-196

>
> A person is put into a "twilight sleep," with the same amnesia-causing
> anasthetics that are used in surgeries.  The controlled amps are sent
> through the body until a Grand Mal epeleptic seizure is elicited and then
> the current is turned off.   That's it.   The Grand Mal releases certain
> innate and organic compounds into the brain that causes the brain to
> re-level its electro-chemical processes.   It's not inhumane and often it
> is the only way to relieve the mental duress and suffering of an
individual.

"The most highly publicized alleged improvement is called modified ECT.
 It involves sedation, muscle paralysis, and artificial respiration....
modified
 shock, of necessity, is more dangerous [than the old form]. First, the
hazards
 of general anesthesia and muscle-paralyzing agents are added to those of
the
 shock. Second, the intensity of current must be greater to overcome the
anticonvulsant
 effect of the short-acting sedative that is injected immediately prior to
the shock...
 Modified ECT wasn't introduced to reduce brain damage, since the shock
doctors
 used to believe that damage was therapeutic. The purpose of the
modifications was
 to prevent fractures from muscle spasms.

 The claim that modified ECT reduces brain damage is a very recent public
relations twist
 and has no validity whatsoever... a great deal of shock is done at the same
or higher
 energy levels used in the 1940s."

               -- pp 208-209

"As drastic as it is, does shock have some merit as a lifesaving treatment
for suicidal people?
 Shock doctors frequently make that claim... David Avery and George
Winokur's "Mortality
 in depressed patients treated with electroconvulsive therapy and
antidepressants" in the
 September 1976 Archives of General Psychiatry... says 'In the present
study, treatment
 was not shown to affect the suicide rate' (p. 1033)... Despite the ease of
studying suicide - one
 must merely follow the patients and count the suicides - there is no
published evidence whatsoever
 that electroshock helps. Instead, some clinicians, including neurologist
John Friedberg and myself, are
 familiar with people who have killed themselves in despair over the brain
damage from shock treatment,
 and we know many others who suffer lifelong despair. Happily, I know a
number of survivors who have
 recognized the damage but triumped over it to lead full, rich lives --
often as activists against psychiatric
 abuse."
      -- pp 207-208

"More than three decades ago two well-known psychiatrists, David Abse and
John Ewing, published a study
 of the motives of biopsychiatrists... "Transference and Countertransference
in Somatic Therapies"... Abse
 and Ewing's several-page analysis of "The Attitudes of Shock Therapists"
draws a picture of men expressing
thinly veiled hatred and violence towards their victims... Some of the
typical quotes they cite from shock doctors
are "Let's give him the works," "Hit him with all we've got," "Why don't we
throw the book at him," "Why don't
we put him on the assembly line," and "The patient was noisy and resistive
so I put him on intensive EST three
times a week."

Two shock-doctor comments struck me as especially revealing. In one case the
psychiatrist told the husband of
a patient that the treatment would help his wife by virtue of its effect as
a "mental spanking." In another case a
doctor decided, "She's too nice a patient for us to give her EST."

The authors conclude, "Clearly, the main attitudes expressed are those of
hostility and punishment" in regard to
giving electroshock....

Abse and Ewing also document the use of shock as a threat against difficult
patients. Personnel on the hospital wards would warn, "You will go on the
shock list." The authors found this generally limited to "junior attendants
who are enjoying a new-found sense of power" and who desire an "unconscious
participation in the 'omnipotence'
of the shock therapist."

Most depressed patients feel very guilty and self-punishing, leading some to
commit suicide. Abse and Ewing
suggest that patients who feel improved by shock probably experience
themselves as undergoing punishment
for their seens. "It seems probable therefore that even the most organically
[biologically] minded shock therapist
unconsciously allies himself with the punitive super-ego of the depressed
patient."...

We cannot, of course, read the minds of modern shock doctors, but we
continue to get some frightening hints.
Before Glen Peterson took over the task from him, the leading public
advocate of shock in California was Gary
Aden. As already described, Aden was a founder and the first president of
the International Psychiatric Association
for the Advancement of Electrotherapy (now the Association for Convulsive
Therapy). Aden's promotion of shock
is praised in Rael Jean Isaac and Virginia C. Armat's book /Madness in the
Streets/ (1990). What Isaac and Armat
fail to mention about Aden can be found in a newspaper account dated
September 27, 1989, in the /San Diego
Union/: "Dr. Gary Carl Aden, 53, of La Jolla gave up his medical license
effective September 8 after allegations he
had sex with patients, beat them and /branded two of the women with heated
metal devices, including an iron that
bore his initials/"

In another story a patient describes Aden as drugging her with a hypodermic
before sexually abusing her and beating
her with a riding crop.

Aden was permitted to forfeit his license without admitting guilt. He was
not subjected to being psychiatrically
diagnosed or treated involuntarily, nor was he criminally charged.

pp 212-213

I could go on forever... but I'm tired. Check out the web sites above for
more info.
Shock gives a "head injury high," which only lasts about 4 weeks, and at the
potential expense of significant brain damage.. it should never be given
involuntarily.
>
> Okay, so in this case it is involuntary. Were I so inclined to sign such
> lame protests, even then there'd be several questions I'd ask, like why is
> the person incarcerated in a state hospital?  Are they so out of tilt they
> can't decide for themselves?   And what basis does the family have for
> their opposition?  It is very common in mental illnesses for the family
> themselves to be partially at cause or at a minimum, at least the
> enablers.  How do we know the family ain't bonkers?   Finally I'd have to

People are locked up for a wide variety of reasons. Perhaps he is depressed
about the
state of the world. Wouldn't surprise me. Does that automatically negate his
right to make
decisions? I know lots of depressed anarchists, should they all be shocked
and become
happy productive capitalists again?

> ask what the alternatives are.   If the guy is going to end up in a
> chemicallly-induced drooling stage for the rest of his life without the
> treatment, or if he's going to be locked up  in a padded room in a
> straight-jacket, well, Dave, I'm all for the electroshock.

Well, so if the psychiatrists are going to torture him in another way
anyway, why not
let them torture him this way? What the hell is that?

Why not just LET HIM OUT?

>
> But this all brings up the bigger question, Dave; in the big scheme of
> things there has to be a mechanism in an anarchist community for dealing
> with aberrant behavior.   Parts of this process will be coercive.   So
what
> would you have this guy do, continue to shit in the town well?

I would hardly consider being depressed, which you consider a "mental
illness," or a "defect" of some sort,
despite the lack of unbiased scientific evidence, "shitting in the town
well."

I suppose, in your "anarchist" society, the anarchoshrinks will round up all
the "potential-well-shitters" and give them
some anarcho-electroshock anarcho-fascistically.

Coercion should be avoided at all costs. There are plenty of alternatives,
such as giving a fuck about people, rather than torturing them...  and
talking to them about WHY THEY'RE DEPRESSED, or maybe WHY THEY'RE SHITTING
IN THE WELL, rather than electrocuting them and tossing them into a cell.

Surely in a society of mutual aid, the incidence of depression would
drastically decrease, being common only among
surviving ex-venture capitalists. Whatever other interpersonal conflicts
produce depression could be remedied
entirely voluntarily... and if the depressed person decides to commit
suicide, such should be their right.
Mutual 'aid' is not 'aid' at all if it is coercive.


I find it incredible that you would side with the authoritarian assholes who
are preparing to rape the mind of
this poor man. Even if you don't know the whole story, surely it would be
better to give him the benefit of
the doubt, and accept the possibility, however remote in your mind, that
this is a wholly unjustified procedure?

If it turns out you were wrong, you can always write the Psychiatric Center
explaining your change of mind and
give them your support for Adam to be shocked involuntarily after all.

Try researching the other side of the story, rather than taking at face
value the propaganda of the psychiatric-industrial complex. (Drug and Shock
companies fund the American Psychiatric Association
and the National Alliance "for" the Mentally Ill)

                                Dave

p.s. i'm not a scientologist, by the way, so you can leave that out of your
inevitable, sure-to-be-exhilirating
flame of my ignorance, stupidity, and poor sentence construction

>
>
>
> carp



   

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