Posted by Psychquackery on August 25, 2003, at 8:59:57
I recently watched the acclaimed movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." I had heard all about this movie, how horrible it is, etc. I did find it to be a rather depressing movie and I could relate to it in many respects. The condescending attitudes of some of the mental health professionals and the poor patient-mental healthcare professional relationships came thru loud and clear. However much of the movie I thought was bunk, at least by the standards of the year 2003. One of which was how ECT was depicted in the movie.
In this movie which was released in 1975, ECT was portrayed strictly as a form of behavioral control. Misbehaving patients (McMurphy, the Indian Chief and the other guy who threw a fit) were sent to the locked ward where the shock room was. There they underwent ECT, without anesthesthia or oxygenation and were literally held down by hospital orderlys. I laughed at this part of the movie, as this is not how ECT is used in the modern era.
First of all, the laws regarding modern ECT in the year 2003:
1) ECT can NOT be used for behavioral control as depicted in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Any use of ECT for this purpose is likely to land the ECT doctor in prison and to lose his license to practice medicine.
2) ECT can only be used to treat severe and refractory mood disorders for which drugs work minimally or poorly. Such as psychotic depression, acute mania, catatonic states, drug resistant major depression especially the melancholic subtype and sometimes refractory schizophrenia. Stringent entry requirements must be filled before a person can be accepted for ECT.
3) ECT is purely voluntary, except under extremely rare circumstances such as when a person has become an invalid and cannot feed themselves or go to the bathroom by themselves and is bedridden. In rare cases such as these, the person is appointed an attorney normally. Most cases of ECT nowadays are PURELY voluntary and the person can pull out at any time.
4) Unlike the ECT portrayed in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, patients are not given anesthisthia, muscle relaxants to keep them from convulsing all over the place and they are artifically oxygenated to keep blood oxygen levels from going down to dangerous levels.
In short, the ECT portrayal in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next" and similar such movies bears little to zero resemblance to the present way ECT is used. Its not "mind control" its not behavioral control. Its just a method to save people from a life of severe, chronic disability when drugs dont work.
The money being wasted on research for such things as VNS, rTMS, etc. should be used to help overcome the tarnished image of ECT, so more individuals could get this outstanding treatment and avoid a life of pure hell.
Igor
poster:Psychquackery
thread:253825
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030823/msgs/253825.html