U.S. News & World Report, Did You Have Layoffs Too?
Because someone is not doing their homework over there. Here’s the headline/subhead from a recent USN&WR article:
Doesn’t that sound kind of familiar? That’s because you’ve read it before — numerous times. I’d say the most recent comeback article was last year in Newsweek:
Or how about the AP:
How about this article from Maclean’s from a couple years ago:
How about Time magazine in 1979?:
Or the New York Times in 1990?:
This one is from four years ago:
You get the idea.
What do all these articles have in common? The suggestion that despite its gruesome reputation, due to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (a PR nightmare the APA still can’t get wake up from), it’s safe and — here’s the kicker — enormously effective. The signposts in the articles are all the same. There’s very little deviation from the boilerplate, which you can see in the headlines alone.
When is someone going to write an honest article about ECT that stuffs the “comeback” nonsense up the APA’s ass, where it belongs? Oh, wait, someone wrote a book about it, published by Rutgers University Press.
Folks, if you want to understand this industry, read Doctors of Deception by Linda Andre. ECT is just as fucked up as Big Pharma, if not more so, as big business goes.
Sorry I sound cynical; we had some layoffs here today, and pay cuts and furloughs and the other crap that goes along with a dying industry (journalism, not ECT). So I’m feeling down. But hey, if I can turn it into righteous anger, why not? It has to be good for something.
liz | 5:19 PM | electroshock (ECT), media
Kudos to Liz. In a mental health system which has little institutional memory and a press corps which too often exhibits the same when covering mental health matters, she remembers or seeks out that which should be remembered
Sorry to read of the layoffs. I fear the printed press will only be fully appreciated when it is gone and then it will simply be too late.
We have a relative that had EXCELLENT results with shock therapy when medications did not work. Unfortunately this relative has another relative that is non-compliant with meds and would never get shock therapy, although it would probably work as well. The new kind of ECT is much kinder than the older one depicted in the movies. So before you blast apart something that might help some, do more research !! UPENN is doing it successively on some patients that are resistant to other treatments (resistant for many differing reasons). And if ECT gives you back a quality of life that allows you to FUNCTION than what’s the big deal.
I believe Liz has had ECT.
I stop short of suggesting it should be banned, because I know people who really love it, and who it worked for when meds failed. But I have a pretty famous neurologist and let’s just say he is not the biggest fan of ECT.
Well here we go again!
First, I am sorry you’re feeling down. I do hope you feel better quickly.
Journalism in my opinion is not a dying industry in this country as was the shoe, cap, belt, garment and textile industries to name but a few. Journalism, as in newspapers, is evolving.
From the Book of Ecclesiastes comes the term there is “nothing new under the sun” and then there is ECT and with this treatment option comes your use of such words as “honest” and “safe” to which the word you’ve written about previously, “truth” should also be incorporated.
No, I haven’t purchased Linda’s book or do I have any interest in doing so. I’m sure it’s her honest attempt to speak the truth from her experiences and perspective just as I speak honestly and truthfully from my perspective as a very, very long time support person and caregiver as did Kitty Dukakis in her book which I’ve also not read as well as others including my spouse that have similarly benefited from the ECT treatment option.
Is the treatment safer than years ago? I’m inclined from my experiences and knowledge, that in the hands of a caring and properly trained physician and attending staff, it is safer than originally administered.
Is the treatment a panacea? Certainly it is not. But then again I’m also inclined to believe that you, me and others challenged in one way or another by the horrific ills of serious mood disorder have come to learn there is no panacea when it comes to these disorders and for some there are decades of trials and tribulations yet to be faced in the hope of some degree of remission.
As with any treatment option education of the patient and/or his/her support person(s) in my opinion is the first extremely important order of business with carefully attention also paid to potential side-effects. As with any of the available treatment options one should also be knowledgeable to the fact that there simply is no guarantee of efficacy to my knowledge at this time.
Based upon my experiences and knowledge ECT remains a viable therapy to be considered although one which I would not consider utilizing unless issues of suicidal ideations begin to raise its ugly head and cannot be abated through other options.
Better a live individual with appropriate treatment options than concerns about industries such as pharmaceutical or ECT in my opinion.
Warmly,
Herb
VNSdepression.com
Individual experience, while entierly valid in understanding who we are & what we’ve survived, *never* paints the larger picture or answers any of the larger questions.
I’ve had no experience with ECT (aside from a grandmother whose life was probably saved by it), & very little with substantial pharmaceutical side effects, so there is obviously a hell of a lot to this that I haven’t seen & don’t understand at a personal level.
That said, I have to agree with Herb: I pray I never face ECT; but if it comes to that, I’d far rather live than die for a principle. It really is a sad thing that our health-care system hasn’t dealt with mental illness in a duly prompt & effective manner, but that is what it is. Painting every aspect of that system as a near-satanic conspiracy is never going to change a damn thing.
I’m honestly having a harder & harder time reading most of the higher-profile patient-advocacy mental health blogs out there these days; too many of them, yours often included, Liz, tilt toward the conspiracy fringe. Furious Seasons, for example, has become nothing more than a dreadfully repetitive anti-meds rant.
There’s nothing unemotional about these issues, ECT most certainly included. But if the choice is between a highly imperfect solution & no solution at all, I hope I never hesitate to pick the latter.
Sorry. Meant to say “pick the former.” What an idiot.
Hmmm… I don’t think it’s a conspiracy. I think these people do think they’re actually helping- and they plug their ears and sing lalalala, when they encounter people like me, who say “I’m being made worse” (because I was- verified by EVERYONE in my life, aside from the psychiatrist I met with once every 6 weeks for half an hour).
That said, IF I ever do have severe, unrelenting treatment-resistant depression, I want the option to be fried. Maybe it’ll make some of those pesky childhood trauma memories go away too.
Well, that’s kind of my point (kind of, anyway). I’m gonna ramble here, so my apologies.
I do know there are people who’ve had terrible experiences with various treatments — not just ECT but various pharma treatments. I mean absolutely no disrespect to folks who’ve suffered from treatment — esp. if they’ve experienced more suffering than the underlying illness would have caused. I also have no disrespect for those who’ve been improperly diagnosed, & I sincerely wish such things *never* happened.
But it’s one thing to be open about our own experiences; it’s another to assume those experiences apply to even one other person.
This is why anecdotal evidence is all but meaningless in science & medicine: It only tells us what *one* person, or a small group, experienced. It’s the old problem of the benevolent dolphins: Back in the 19th century, sailors shipwrecked not far from land would report being saved by dolphins who pushed them closer to land. People took this to mean the dolphins were actively trying to help. The problem is, there was no way of knowing whether other sailors had been pushed *out* to sea or pushed in circles, etc., by dolphins who were merely being playful, b/c those sailors would have drowned.
And here’s the thing, at least as I see it: The ultimate choice is between flawed treatment & no treatment at all. I may be wrong, but I doubt the number of mistreated people outnumbers those who haven’t received the treatments they need. I just get a bit sicker every time I read another claim that mental illness is a scam created by drug makers or whacko shrinks, or that the flaws in the health care system render it completely useless.
I’m a recovering alcoholic, & I’ve lost count of the times people in AA meetings have claimed that psychiatry is not only useless but harmful to any recovering alcholic, & that any diagnosis other than alcoholism is a sham used to avoid personal responsibility. These arguments are frequently filled with rage, judgmentalism, stigma & a complete lack of information. Often they come from people deeply offended by a doctor’s suggestion that they might actually have a condition that’s comorbid w/alcoholism (I certainly do, but it in no way relieves me of responsibility for my recovery).
The thing is, as tactful as I almost always am about my own point of view, the people who feel this way almost never respond in kind. They tell me that if I don’t stop taking “happy pills” & seeing “quack” shrinks, I’ll never stay sober like they have. They (& a lot of others outside of recovery) tell me it’s all an excuse to avoid responsibility in life & attract sympathy.
They of course have every right to their opnions, but that hardly makes them prophets (the same obviously applies to the limits of my own experiences).
This is what’s making it hard for me to read so many advocacy blogs: They so often take the same I’m-right-you’re-wrong tack (I don’t think Liz does that, but I do think the point about anecdotal evidence applies to her as well).
Do we need more study & openness about ECT? Of course we do. But that doesn’t mean that individual experiences make it a bad thing. As I said, it probably saved my grandmother; it almost certainly has saved others. But the question is, on a large scale, do its benefits outweigh the damage it’s caused? No one person’s — or small group’s — experiences can answer that question.
Anyway, sorry again to ramble.
I hear you. I guess it’s different for me because I find it so hard to find reliable, trustworthy data, and the data that I HAVE read is not all that clearcut about the benefits of meds. Regardless, if what you are doing helps you, you should keep doing what you’re doing. Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that! I think we all need to respect each other’s choices.
I agree with the family member who mentions that ECT helped their relative, although for me it was a friend whose daughter was finally helped through ECT at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She had a very severe depression and medications didn’t work for her. If you researched this further, I think you would find that ECT IS different now, much milder than before, and I don’t think it makes much sense to trash a treatment if it benefits someone who might not be helped otherwise.
My father reluctantly sends his unipolar patients for ECT as a last resort. He will do it, and he does think that the success rate in previously intractable depressives makes the treatment worth a try. But he worries about memory issues. On the other hand, he encouraged a boyfriend of mine to seek out someone who might be willing to treat him with ECT, because his depression was and is so constant and disabling. He wouldn’t do it.
I’m not opposed to ECT for those who choose it. However, I am opposed to it ever being used on people against their will. It is wrong to assume that someone who is severely depressed is incapable of understanding the risks/benefits of ECT. Even in my darkest times, I knew I did not want to risk permanent memory loss or worse. I had read enough to know it was not like the movies (why do people assume we’re all ignorant?). I am glad that even though ECT was supposedly my only hope, no one forced me to have it. Because, lo and behold it wasn’t my only hope I was just seeing the wrong shrink.
I wish doctors would not downplay the risks with patients. I had a legitimate concern about memory loss (the same concern I have now that I’m not depressed) and it should have been taken seriously instead of blamed on the scientologists. Memory loss IS a risk of ECT and not all severely depressed people want to assume that risk. Incidentally, like Kimbriel’s neurologist a neurologist I saw years later shared my concerns about memory loss. So, I guess he also had lack of insight?
It should always remain the patient’s choice, and they should not be coerced into having a procedure with risks they do not wish to assume. That’s not exactly called informed consent. To those who support ECT, don’t assume that all severely depressed people would agree it’s worth it.
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