Landmark Decision - Stop Doing Electroshock

A Santa Barbara court has issued a landmark decision; telling the Santa Barbara College Hospital and resident psychiatrist Joseph Johnson to stop using electroshock therapy!

In the case, the plaintiff lost most of his memory. From the article: "Atze Akkerman was a devoted husband, father and professional musician who after receiving electroshock (shock treatment) could no longer remember his wife of 20 years, his children, or how to play music. In the five years since receiving the brutal treatment, his memory has not returned."

Akkerman said, "I know I'm not the only one." He's right about that. Electroshock therapy is famous for erasing huge chunks of memory, sometimes never to return.

Akkerman and his wife filed suit against the hospital and psych Johnson, who performed the shock, claiming they were negligent and had deceived Mr. Akkerman by withholding from him the dangers of the treatment and misrepresenting that it was "safe and effective."

In the trial, Johnson admitted nobody knows how electroshock therapy works.

Akkerman's attorney, Kendrick Moxon, said, "Psychiatrists pretend shock treatment is no longer like the violent bone breaking practice of the past, as portrayed in enduring images of "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest." They are lying. There is no difference in what happens to the brain during shock treatment in 1954 or 2004. The violence exerted on the brain is exactly the same."

I guess the psychs will have to fall back to their old standby remedy; prescription of Prozac or other psychotropic drugs. These leave much of the memory intact and although they make many people suicidal and homicidal, they do it much more quietly.

Actually that wouldn't be a good idea either, would it?