Totally disagree with this idea as been mentioned by everyone here what are they turning us into!
Read this article from my local paper just the other day, apparently this is in the area of Kent in England, same area i live.
It seems electric shock treatment is on the up!
Why Kent though i can not say.
Are we a county of insane, over excited, maybe depressed, suicidal, group of numbskull idiots! lol!!
This type of treatment is Dickensian i can't understand why it still exists.
Electric shock brain therapy 'on the increase'
The use of a controversial psychiatric treatment that sends high-voltage currents of electricity through the brain is on the rise in Kent.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is mainly use to treat patients with severe depression when they have not responded to other forms of treatment.
Anti-psychiatry Scientology organisation the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) claimed the use of the therapy in Kent and Medway has risen 68 per cent over the last five years.
Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust, which is responsible for mental health in the county, confirmed it had received a Freedom of Information request from the CCHR but said there had been only a “slight increase” in the use of ECT.
Marie Dodd, the trust’s director of operations, said: “The delivery of ECT is undertaken in line with Nice [National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence] guidelines.
“It is used to gain fast and short-term improvement of severe symptoms after all other treatment options have failed, or when the situation is thought to be life-threatening, including when people have stopped eating or drinking as a result of their depression.
“This practice is not unusual and is line with the rest of the NHS. Nice follows a rigorous programme of evidence evaluation in researching and appraising treatments.
“We do not support people scaremongering about a nationally approved and safe treatment as this may potentially discourage people, who could benefit from this treatment, from accepting it as part of their care.”
She said the decision to give ECT to a patient was made on a case-by-case basis and is delivered at one of the trust’s three centres in Dartford, Maidstone or Ashford.
Research shows many patients find the treatment helpful but others can experience emotional and physical side-effects.
Paul Farmer, chief executive of the mental health charity Mind, said: “Mind has found that people’s experiences of ECT vary enormously.
“When we conducted a survey of people who have received ECT we found that 84 per cent experienced side-effects such as memory loss, difficultly concentrating, headaches and dizziness.
“Having said this, some people do find it helpful in alleviating feelings of depression and others have credited it with saving their lives.
“These people should not be prevented from choosing this treatment, but anyone opting for ECT must always be fully informed about the procedure and potential for negative side effects.”
The trust’s information leaflet for patients on ECT explains how the electricity is given under a general anaesthetic and with a muscle-relaxing drug so there is little movement of the body.
While the patient is unconscious two padded electrodes are placed on the temples and a series of brief high-voltage elective pulses, about 60 to 70 a second, for three to five seconds, which causes a seizure or fit.
As a treatment ECT has existed since the 1930s and although it is now given under Nice guidelines and is never given ‘unmodified’ or without anaesthetic and muscle-relaxants in the UK or the US it has picked up negative connotations.
Its use is featured in Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which later became an award-winning film with Jack Nicholson, where it is dangerous, inhumane and overused, and more recently to similar effect in Clint Eastwood’s Changeling.
“ECT is an invasive and irreversible procedure,” Mr Farmer said. “It should only ever be used as a last resort for cases of extreme depression, when every other treatment has been tried.
“Even then, it should never be given without fully informed consent except in an emergency.”
Mind’s information leaflet on ECT states that the emotional and psychological effects are under-estimated and under-researched.
In a 2001 survey for the charity a woman from Surrey said: “ECT was done to me, not done for me.
“That’s the total sense of how it felt. It paralleled sexual abuse, which I experienced as a child, someone doing something to my body against my will.”
But in the same survey another woman, from Staffordshire, said: “If I had not received ECT I would be dead by now.”
There is no clear explanation for how ECT works but it is known to adjust the levels of brain chemicals involved in mood regulation, such as serotonin and noradrenaline, and to enhance the activity of dopamine.