# ECT and suicide

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/ect-and-suicide/3747>\
**Category:** CSG1997\
**Created:** [December 18, 1997, 7:59pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/ect-and-suicide/3747 "1997-12-18T19:59:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Acree\_Mike](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@Acree\_Mike](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Acree_Mike)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 1997, 7:59pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/ect-and-suicide/3747/1 "1997-12-18T19:59:00Z")

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[From Mike Acree (971218.1148)]

Bruce Gregory (971217.1320 EST)

> > Depression is hardly unknown among psychiatrists; they have one of

the

> > highest rates, if not the highest rate, of suicide among the  
> > professions. Many of them also insist that electroshock therapy

(ECT)

> > is the treatment of choice for severe depression. Yet Robert Morgan,  
> > author of the \_Iatrogenics Handbook\_, has pointed out in court

testimony

> > that \_no\_ psychiatrists have ever prescribed ECT for themselves--or

for

> > anyone they liked. (There was one case of a psychiatrist prescribing

it

> > for his mother-in-law.)

> What lesson are we to draw from this example? That electroshock  
> therapy is bad? Or that psychiatrists can't recognize when they  
> might benefit from it? I've always heard that someone who treats  
> his own disorder has a fool for a doctor and a fool for a  
> patient.

It struck me as a particularly telling example of the lack of respect I  
had referred to (in my previous post) among some helping professionals  
for those they are supposedly helping. But it may be telling you  
something else.

Bruce Abbott (9712.1420 EST)

> Electroshock therapy evokes images of the electric chair or the

torture

> chamber. It was depicted as a kind of punishment in the movie \_One

Flew

> Over the Cuckoo's nest. Do you have any idea what electroshock

therapy is

> like, from the patient's perspective? From the therapist's

perspective?

> What its side-effects are? Why do you suppose psychiatrists would not  
> prescribe it for themselves?

The most notorious "side" effect is memory loss. For this reason it is  
overwhelmingly favored for elderly people, who already have enough  
memory problems that any additional deficit due to treatment would be  
hard to prove in court.

The standard acronym, by the way, is, as Dan Miller (971217.1450) notes,  
ECT, for electroconvulsive therapy, which conveys a little more of what  
it's like from the patient's point of view. In my one experience  
working on a psychiatric ward, I had the impression that ECT was indeed  
used punitively, judging from the behaviors it was prescribed for and  
the patients who were threatened with it; I didn't see "Cuckoo's Nest"  
as very fictionalized.

Mark Lazare (971217(f?))

> I always ask their permission to help or at least "try" to help them.

I

> always start and progress in terms of cooperation -- force is only

used as a

> last resort, because the CT is unable or unwilling to cooperate --

also I

> never tell the ct that is part of my powers of control, IF I did I

could not

> be sure they were cooperating because they did not want to be forced

into

> something.

I'm not much impressed with the defense of force that it is used only as  
a last resort. The same would be said by muggers or the IRS, who are  
quite right in believing they couldn't get our money any other way. A  
few months ago I quoted Al Capone's remark that "you can get a lot  
farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with the kind word  
alone."

Rick Marken (971217.1400)

Thanks for your moving story of S. As you anticipated, I liked your way  
of being with her. Your observation to her that suicide is always  
available is one I took first from Nietzsche--"The thought of suicide is  
a comforting one; by means of it one gets successfully through many a  
difficult night"--and found helpfully apt in my teens. I know,  
incidentally, one courageous therapist who met a very seriously suicidal  
woman in her despair, let her see (over the phone, at midnight) that he  
really "got" it; and the experience of finally being understood (and  
accepted) was transformative for her.

Mike