How would you like a shock to the brain?

Psychiatry Still Uses Electroshock Therapy on Children

This article dealt with the issue that many doctors in the United States are still utilizing the use of electroshock therapy to help cure people from psychological disorders. I am extremely shocked that this practice is still being practiced. I for one would have hoped that the idea of blasting someone’s brain with high powered electric currents would have gone the way of blood letting and not been used in modern science. There is no logical reason to actually think blasting out major portions of brain matter could actually help someone. And the fact that the article focused on mainly was the use of this barbaric technology on children as young as four. What drove these doctors to using electroshock? Seems like it would be an absolute last-ditch effort. Wrong. They were quoted as using it only after drugs didn’t do the trick. The problem here really seems to be inadequacy in our professionals. No doctor should get so lazy as to tell someone, “well the anti-depressants and prozac didn’t work, now I have this car battery hooked up to these plugs and now were gonna put them on your head.” I am completely against using electroshock therapy, it is scary and loud and destructive. If doctors familiarized themselves with psychological disorders the would be able to diagnose problems fully and be able to define what possible solutions could be instead of brain damage as simple as it may seem. Turning off the part of the brain causing the problem is no way to help a person get over whatever disorder is affecting their ability to function.

http://www.naturalnews.com/025932.html

I would not like a shock to the brain! I too am very surprised that this is still being used to treat people, especially little kids under the age of four! If you were a doctor how could you sleep at night knowing that you are going to wake up and shock a little kid the next day just because he is not like everyone else. I do not agree with electroshock therapy either and think it is a very sick and evil thing to do. Your comment about bloodletting was very interesting because I actually thought that both of these things were something that was in the past and that doctors learned from their mistakes of what not to do! Anyways, if your trying to help cure someone it seems like this would only make things worst.

I thought that using shock therapy would have gone out of date a long time ago too. Even though it hasn’t been such a long time since they did do this to patients of mental hospitals. I can’t see doing this on adults let alone children. How do they know that the child is not going to develop fine after their brain starts to develop more, or even after some therapy? Drugs and shock therapy are not the only answers to the problem, but I guess the doctors that are practicing this must think so. I hope that they don’t start to do this for older people. If they did, I hope that I am completely mentally together when I get older. If not I might get shocked for forgetting something.

If someone tried to shock me in the brain, let’s just say I would not be too happy about it. I can’t believe this is still being practiced, especially on young children. I thought it had been stopped a long time ago. In young children, how can they prove that young children’s brains won’t develop correctly as they age? Apparently some doctors think that shock therapy is the only answer to the problem that is being addressed. I think something needs to be done to end this method of treatment. All I know is those doctors better keep this procedure away from me.

ECT (electrocovulsive therpy or electroshock therapy)is used primarily in adults, and I will admit I know nothing about it's use in children. I have read that it is less effective in children and adolescents than it is in adults. When I was going through my mental health nursing clinicals and found out that I would have to observe ECT treatment and recovery of the patient I was quite nervous. Let me assure you it is not what you are thinking. The currently used ECT is nothing like what you have seen in the movies. In fact, none of the students that I had clinicals with observed seizure activity with the ECT. Generally, the patient is given medications that is calm and control seizure activity, and then the shock is administered. The treatments are effective for severe depression in patients where medications do not work. In fact, one elderly patient's spouse confided in me that without the therapy, she is sure her husband would have committed suicide because his depression was so severe. As I said, I know nothing about children and adolescents, but here is some information on ECT if you care to read it.

Okay, here is a little information on children and teens and ECT. From WebMD, "Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) may be an effective treatment for a teen or older child who is severely depressed or does not respond to other treatment, although this treatment is rarely used for children and teens. Even though it is an effective treatment for adults with major depression, there are currently no long-term studies on the safety of using ECT for children and teens or adults."


ECT procedure

ECT Children/teens

From what I have heard is that electro shock therapy works. In my psych class last semester, my teacher had talked about this. She claimed that in some cases when medication failed that some doctors used this method. The results in some patients actually helped for certain periods of time. I am in favor of this technique. I mean if it is going to help than why not? It funny because the movies make it look like some kind of electric chair, used for punishment, when in all actuality it sounds like a fairly normal procedure. If I were running out of options I would gibe it a try.

I completely agree with with Cory's view on this issue. I can't believe that they are still using this type of therapy to "help" people with there problems after drugs didn't work. We learned about this in psychology, and I guess I assumed that it was a thing of the past as well. We looked at how in a case study that people would take electroshock so far as to kill someone if there was an authority figure telling them to do this. This case study was done many years ago, so I thought that along with this case study, electroshock was a thing of the past.