Testimony of Linda Andre, Director of Committee for Truth in Psychiatry - Director of Committee for Truth in Psychiatry, Testifies against Forced Electroshock

Written by Linda Andre

Along these lines, I warn you not to derail these hearings into a general discussion of mental patient competency---as happened to some extent in 1977. Too often, the discussion on informed consent to shock ends when someone assumes that the real issue is that mental patients lack capacity to consent to anything. First of all, that's not true in the vast majority of cases. Second, it implies that the problem with shock resides in the patient, and not the industry. In 2001, the sharpest, most alert, most intelligent and competent patient cannot give informed consent to ECT, because there is nowhere in New York State or in the country where that patient will be informed of the true risks and benefits of shock. The patient is deceived by the assurances provided by the shock industry that shock is effective, that memory loss is trivial and rare, that memory comes back...the lies propagated by the APA's small Task Force of career ECT promoters. Until the day when the most competent patient can give informed consent to shock, no one can.

There is one more reason why ECT continues to exist. Psychiatrists need it. There are always going to be people whom they cannot help, and the more the field comes to rely exclusively on biological theories of mental illness and biological treatments, the more true this will be. There must be something psychiatry can hold out to those it has failed (and it is they who have failed, despite their practice of referring to their patients as "treatment failures")---something drastic and dramatic, something absolutely certain to have a dramatic effect in the short term, some last resort that can get the patient out of the hospital in the time allotted by the insurance companies and make the psychiatrist look like a hero. If a patient's brain is damaged in the process, that is a small price to pay (for the psychiatrist). Psychiatry offers brain damage as treatment because it has nothing else to offer. It is bankrupt. I am sure that if psychiatry could come up with something else besides ECT that fit the need for the last-resort treatment, it would get rid of shock. It's been trying for decades and hasn't come up with anything. Dr. Sackeim and others who have tried to develop (and profit from) drugs to eliminate the adverse effects of ECT have been unsuccessful. He's currently experimenting with giant magnets. But psychiatry's not going to admit ECT is brain damage until it has something else to offer. It puts saving face ahead of saving patients' brains.

Contact information:
Linda Andre
Committee for Truth in Psychiatry
P.O. Box 1214
New York, NY 10003

212 665-6587
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