The Chinese government has banned electroshock therapy as a treatment for Internet addiction after one psychiatrist administered electric currents to nearly 3,000 teenagers. When did we realize that you could shock someone to make them less crazy?
In the 1930s. The idea originated with the theory that an inverse relationship existed between schizophrenia and epilepsy, since schizophrenics rarely had epilepsy and epileptics were rarely schizophrenic. This observation led a Hungarian neurologist named Ladislas Meduna to experiment with chemically induced seizure as a treatment for psychotic patients. (Doctors had been using convulsive therapy to cure madness as early as the 16th century, when Swiss physician Paracelsus gave a patient camphor to induce seizures. But Meduna was unaware of the precedent.)
The approach was effective, but the drugs took a while to kick in and were considered dangerous. A few years later, a psychiatrist named Ugo Cerletti managed to achieve the same effects using only an electric current. He first tested electroshock therapy on a human in 1938 on a vagrant he found in a Rome train station. Before treatment, the patient spoke only gibberish. After a series of high-voltage bursts, according to Cerletti, he began talking.
Although I’ve never had it myself, as someone who has her own significant mental health difficulties, I know a number of people for whom ECT has worked well. I also know others who were even more screwed up by the experience.
Whilst it CAN be an effective psychiatric tool, I think it’s imperative that it’s only ever used after ALL other methods of treatment have been exhausted and then only in the most serious of cases. To mete it out to people who have Internet addictions is both appalling and frightening. For once, the Chinese government have behaved sensibly in banning the practice for this reason.
I’m just stunned that it happened in the first place.
Wow… I can be treated for my internet addiction simply by plugging myself into the mains? Why didn’t you say so earlier! Oh… wait… there’s side effects. Nevermind, no toasted Flapjack today. Nothing to see here!
A practice brutish and inhuman … that just interrupted the relations between
the commessure brain (such as the corpus callosum)…
Gennaro
Italy
ah, classic interrogation. make a guy talk by hooking him up to a car battery. inspired ^-^
Let’s hope that those chinese people really suffered from something not normal. Too many see upon the internet still as if it is not healthy … a bit a dumb vision, narrowed. As it was with TV,t hat was going to make you blind. That’s apart from the treatment which def. is so out of proportion in thiscase anyhow .. It’s almost a joke.
I just read that it is still being used for severe depressed people, bipolar disorders etc., in combination with drugs. I myself am not sure whether I myself would ever choose for such a treatment. The brain is not the heart. It seems to be quite risky and does have side effects.
A while ago, might be via this blog, I saw an interview with a female who had undergone shocktreatment in a clinic somewhere in the old days. She def. did not seem normal, as if she had seen a ghost. This might work on a few .. boosting them out of their bases .. but will be a disaster for others. It probably feels as if having lost the main part of yourself.
Some people tend to believe, from their very dumb mind, in shock psychotherapeutic socializing …. I’ve seen and heard a few around … they are not aware that they do have no human or psychological insight of whatsoever … Some parents are like that … you can imagine how that will effect the childeren. The saddest thing as you quite often can not explain to the parents why what they see or do is not correct … Most cases remain unseen. Only the child(eren) know. The damage can not be undone.
Simply dangerous…i´ve never understood this treatment when i first read about it, people don´t even half know how the brain functions and to resort to this….it´s like hitting your not so well tv on the side, or on the top, in the hope the screen vision gets better….nuts.
ECT can work on a few occasions. Then again, it is mighty hard to spot the placebo effect when it comes to Psychological treatments.
This area of treatment for depression or Bi-Polar I do not agree with. I refused to watch it being done to an elderly patient when I was a student studying mental heath, despite the so called benefits. I read quite a lot about it, and am not convinced.
Jacqueline: I agree. It is bad enough that we tend to brand all bad feelings under the label ‘depression’ as if it is some sort of illness to be cured.
Why try to cure negative feelings? They are there to tell us what direction to go in, and learning new information or taking different paths will remove the need for negative feelings to go overboard (assuming there are no TRUE biological conditions).
It’s always best to make peace with your negative emotions instead of declaring war and not listening to their messages. They are there for a reason!
I have never fully understood ECT, aside from frying brain cells how can an electric current help reduce mental illness??? I accidently electrocuted myself a few years ago and it was a very horrible (not to mention stupid on my part) experience. Even when ECT is shown on television it freaks me out.
A sensible policy for a happier Britain.
Re choice. There isn’t always a choice with this treatment. If Drs decide you’re not well enough to understand, or that your mental health is rapidly declining and other drugs are proving ineffective, it can be prescribed anyway.
From the 2007 Amendments to the Mental Health Act 1983:
If a patient understands the treatment proposed and refuses it, then a course of ECT cannot be prescribed.
If a patient does not understand the treatment proposed, a second opinion must be called for and if
the second doctor agrees that ECT is necessary and appropriate, then this can be prescribed.
If, however, the patient made an Advanced Decision, when they were well, saying they never wished to
receive ECT and the hospital knows about this, then the treatment cannot be given. The only exception
would be in an emergency if it is:
1. immediately necessary to save a patient’s life
2. immediately necessary to prevent a serious deterioration of the patient’s condition.