please send me article abaut diabetes & aldzimer

Hey Linda,

Nobody is interested. Just like nobody is interested in Scientology or the CCHR.

5 Alfred St
Mascot NSW 2020
Ph 1300 663 860 Work

RE: ELECTRO CONVULSIVE “THERAPY” (ECT)

As an ex Canberra resident, I studied ECT in detail. ECT helped cause my mother to die. The public and neurologists generally consider it harmful and degrading. I am dismayed over Canberra’s laws facilitating forced ECT. A psychiatrist, doctor, and tribunal need only “believe” someone is mentally ill and ECT would save their life. “Belief” without scientific proof, is not acceptable for other forced procedures in medicine. And laws in other states/territories are not much better.

Does ECT Help Or Harm?
“Positive” effects of ECT last for the 4 weeks in which victims are stunned by brain injury. There is no reliable proof of later “benefit”. Full analysis of studies show ECT does not curb depression or suicide overall. A common effect is despair due to damage caused. It is partly irreversible, accumulates and causes suicide. The brain damage can spark epilepsy, and reduce memory, fine motor co-ordination, higher orders of thinking or emotional intelligence. Rupture of the brain blood barrier or vascular deterioration causing risk of heart attack or stroke are other effects. I enclose a copy of Electroshock, Scientific, Ethical And Political Issues by psychiatrist, Peter Breggin, International Journal of Risk And Safety In Medicine 11, 1998 5-40 IOS Press.

A New Zealand report says: “there is no definitive randomized evidence that ECT prevents suicide” and suggests letting patients make Advance Directives against ECT (Use of Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) In New Zealand: A Review of Efficacy, Safety and Regulatory Control, December 2004). America’s leading researcher on ECT, Harold Sackeim (Columbia University) is explicit that a long term study shows ECT causes both permanent amnesia and deficits in cognitive capacity (Ref: Journal of Neuropsychopharmology, January 2007). Critics say sponsorship by ECT device manufacturer, Mecta Corp, once made him take a more lenient view and he still does the most positive interpretations possible on ECT.

Does ECT Effectively Treat Specific Conditions?
The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic And Statistical Manual (DSM) has serious caveats on treatments of mental illnesses - definitions are evolving and very subjective, and validity of treatments for specific circumstances is unproven. Major depression or “schizophrenia” are very fluid indicators for ECT and may relate to social conditions, personal traits or physical ailments, e.g., addiction to street or psychiatric drugs, tumors, cancer, diabetes, hypothyroidism or hepatitis.

Public enquiry into ECT in Piedmont, Italy (country of invention) prompted a resolution that no doctor has to recommend ECT in any circumstances, in view of lack of scientific basis. It cannot be given by force or to children, the pregnant or elderly. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rates ECT devices as “Type III”. “Type III” means ECT is experimental, in the top risk category. After 70 years, ECT devices still cannot pass rigorous testing for safety or efficacy!

Does ECT Compound Earlier Treatment Failures?
ECT admits and compounds failure of neuroleptics (“nerve seizing” drugs) for “schizophrenia” or psychosis. Rebound effects of the drugs are ghastly and include extreme nervous agitation, “handled” by raising dosage. Symptoms of schizophrenia are due, “in at least large part to the effects of neuroleptics” (Ref: Science Writer, Robert Whitaker, Author of Mad In America). Neuroleptics increase psychosis long term (Ref: High Potency Neuroleptics and Violence In Schizophrenics, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Vol. 176 No 9, 1988, P. 558). Claims that newer versions are safer are not scientifically verified. They affect motor co-ordination less than traditional neuroleptics but cause more diabetes and extreme anxiety or restlessness. Long-term effects are not fully known.

Are There Alternatives To ECT?
In one study, 83 percent of those seeing psychiatrists had an unknown ailment, e.g., early diabetes, causing their mental state. Another study found it true of 42 percent of psychotics. Mental symptoms are the first overt sign in 76 percent of cases of certain cancers (Ref: Dr David Sternberg, M.D., “Testing For Physical Illnesses in Psychiatric Patients”, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Vol. 47, No. 1 Jan 1986, Supplement, pg 5: Dr Richard C. Hall, M.D. et al, “Physical Illness Presenting As Psychiatric Disease” Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol. 35, Nov 1987, pp. 1315-16). Due to physical ailments or nutritional deficits affecting mental state, half of all mental patients simply should not be in the mental health system. Increasingly, psychiatric drugs replace vital medical care.

Initiating full screening of physical health did not increase spending in California’s total health budget. Its mental health system had been ignorant of half all cases of ailments affecting mental state (Ref: Medical Evaluation Field Manual, Lorrin M. Koran, M.D. Dept of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Stanford University Medical Centre, California, 1991). Asylums need a full range of medical diagnostic equipment and to help without fear of force. Patients need nutrition, quiet, rest and exercise.

The top work of psychiatrists achieving a good long-term prognosis for “schizophrenics” is by low cost programs with gentle actions and no heavy psychiatric drugs, e.g., by Italian psychiatrists after wholesale closure of Italian asylums in the 1990’s, and by U.S. psychiatrist, Loren Mosher, in his Soteria House Project in the 1970’s. He found patients given no anti-psychotic drugs “actually did better than hospital and drug-treated control subjects”(Ref: “Soteria And Other Alternatives to Acute Psychiatric Hospitalization: A Personal And Professional Review, Loren Mosher, The Journal of Nervous And Mental Disease, Vol 187, pp 142-49).

Dr Hoffer (Canada) gave 5,000 schizophrenics high-dose multi nutrients, especially vitamins B3 and C. His 40-year follow-up reports show a 90% cure rate - defined as symptom-free, socializing and working (Ref: Optimum Nutrition For The Mind, Patrick Holford). In parts of the world where there is no psychiatric drugging, recovery from schizophrenia is far better, as noted in an 8 year study by the World Health Organization and replicated by a study to check similarity of diagnosis. (Ref: The International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia: Five-Year Follow-Up Findings, Psychological Medicine Vol. 22 1992).

Is Modern ECT Really Safer?
Trends favor stronger doses of ECT, due to newer shock devices with far higher current. Intake of various modern psychiatric drugs, anesthetic and muscle relaxants (to curb bone fractures) are factors increasing the pre-convulsion threshold. Modern addition of oxygen prolongs the convulsion. As strength and duration of current is much more, significant brain damage seen in early animal and human autopsy was far less.

Why Does ECT Persist?
Promotion is largely based on fear of litigation if psychiatrists reverse their faulty stand and generous pay for no direct effort when ordering bouts of ECT. It is part of a much bigger picture of persistence of inhumane and unworkable psychiatric treatments - sparked by the vested interests of a buoyant mental health industry. Psychiatrists are notorious for false notions of safety or efficacy (seen by the growing evidence on real effects of psychiatric drugs). And the mental health industry’s control or sponsorship of virtually all patients’ advocacy groups, greatly compromises opposition to damaging psychiatric treatments! These groups, nicknamed “astroturf” spread much industry “spin” (Ref: Richard Gosden ahd Sharon Beder, Pharmaceutical Industry Agenda setting in Mental Health Polices, Ethical Human Science and Services 3(3) Fall/Winter 2001, pp 147-159). Undue psychiatric power and influence is a major human rights issue swept under the carpet.

Does Forced ECT Violate International Or Common Law?
At http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html is the Resolutions, Declarations and Covenants noting basic human rights of patients and the public. Irreversible and intrusive psychiatric treatments done by force violate U.N. Resolution 1991.The Protection of Persons With Mental Illness And The Improvement of Mental Health Care, Item 14 Of Principle 11, Consent To Treatment.

Impartiality of mental health tribunals is curbed by inclusion of psychiatrists violating separation of the judiciary and executive by judging their peers. Since, 1990, patients no longer have direct access to impartial courts. This discrimination makes them more vulnerable than common prisoners, violating Item 4, Principle 1 of the above Resolution, stating there must be “no discrimination on the grounds of mental illness” and “Discrimination means any distinction, exclusion, or preference that has the effect of nullifying or impairing equal enjoyment of rights”. Christopher Pyne, (now National Minister for Aging) wrote to me on 10/6/05, stating a national commitment to having mental health laws reflect the above resolution. Canberra is a place clearly not complying!

Conclusion
Laws are grossly inadequate to address continued human suffering caused by ECT in Canberra. It must be banned as a damaging act. Especially, it must never be done by force. Broad review of compliance of Canberra’s mental health laws with international law is also long overdue. I have taken the trouble to write to every member of the assembly and give them a copy of psychiatrist, Peter Breggin’s full paper, noted above. It’s time we all “wake up and smell the coffee”.
Yours sincerely

Linda Vij
24 August 2007