ECT: 460 Volts AND a “Large Evil” Seizure

    Most people are horrified by the brutality of running more than 400 volts of electricity through a patient’s brain for electroshock “therapy.” Today, of course, it doesn’t look so scary because of the muscle relaxant and the anesthetic used beforehand.

     But that thermonuclear dose of electricity is only half the story.

     A patient is savagely zapped by psychiatrists in order to induce a grand mal seizure. Grand mal is French, by the way for “large evil.” Their ludicrous theory is that because the brain of a schizophrenic has fewer glia cells (support cells that keep the nervous system functioning well) than that of an epileptic, by inducing a grand mal seizure, the schizophrenic brain will be “promoted” to produce more glia cells.

     Are psychiatrists really that illogical, or do they just need that kind of bogus argument to justify their human cruelty?

     The muscle relaxant and anesthetic are actually given to protect the patient from the violence of the seizure itself, not from the electrical jolt. They prevent the crushed teeth and broken vertebrae that can occur from the violence of that large evil convulsion. The relaxant is the same chemical they give a death row patient just before he is electrocuted, and the anesthetic is given because the severe body paralysis from the relaxant is so painful to someone.

     Stephen King couldn’t have made up a more extreme form of torture.

     Every other doctor on the planet besides a psychiatrist is trying to prevent people from having seizures. Why? Because grand mal seizures give patients a greater risk of cognitive impairment, sleep disorders, speech and motor impairment, structural brain damage, cardiovascular disease, bone disease, and psychiatric disorders.

     Wait a minute! Grand mal seizures increase the risk of psychiatric disorders in patients who already have a psychiatric disorder that has not responded to massive doses of SSRIs and benzodiazepines? Yep. More psychiatric brilliance.

     Grand mal seizures also give a significant risk factor for sudden unexpected death. But what’s a little sudden unexpected death if the patient’s schizophrenia is cured? There are only a little over one of those deaths for every 1000 people who have grand mal seizures. Not bad odds.

     Grand mal seizures are now called “tonic-clonic seizures” by the psychiatric industry, an indecipherable term that sounds so much less off-putting than “large evil.”

     Of course, the more grand mal seizures a person has, the greater the risk for these horrible “side effects.” Most ECT patients get at least ten to twelve shocks for their initial treatment, and many patients are prescribed follow-up maintenance dosage shock sessions every six months to a year. There are also many ECT patients who have been given hundreds of large evil seizures over their life in this horrifically misguided effort to cure their “mental disorder” by increasing their risk of even greater mental disorder.