Mom’s Soap Box

American psychiatry still regards electroconvulsive therapy as a respected treatment, even for kids. Although ECT for young children is nowhere near as common as for adults, most U.S. states do not prohibit ECT for kids. California prohibits 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.

Electroconvulsive Therapy for Children?

On Jan. 25, 2009, the Herald Sun in Melbourne, Australia, reported: “Children younger than 4 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 4 and younger.”

During ECT the patient/child receives a series of 70 to 170 volts of brain zappings and is thrown into seizures. Psychiatry is well aware of its historical bad press about ECT, 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.

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.”

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

Source:

Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet.