Eyes
peer at me, then quickly look away.
Because
they are afraid.
Because
they sense the humiliation.
Because
they know not what else to do.
Stretchers
in front of me. Stretchers behind me.
Some
poor soul being dragged where none of us want to go.
Who
would have thought that a single shriek could fill the universe? (from Burstow, 2017—The Other Mrs.
Smith; https://www.amazon.ca/Other-Mrs-Smith-Bonnie-Burstow/dp/1771334215/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1508451818&sr=8-1&keywords=the+other+mrs.+smith
In the midst of flagrant professional mispresentation of
ECT, this article provides hard-hitting and accurate information about the
“psychiatric treatment” known as electroshock (ECT). What goes along with this, this article is a
call to arms. Quite simply, the time has come for a frontal assault on the ECT
industry and on the professionals associated with it. The time has come to rid society of this
barbaric “treatment” altogether.
Naturally, it would make no sense to call for the end to a
“treatment” unless clearly it was first and foremost profoundly injurious. So…
What are the Salient Facts
about Electroshock?
There are so many horrific facts about ECT that it would
take several articles to list them all. In a nutshell, however, some of the
most pressing of these are:
·
ECT is a putative “treatment” involving the
application of sufficient electricity to the brain to produce a grand mal (Whitaker,
2002, and Breggin, 1991). A relevant point here is that every other branch of
medicine moves mountains to prevent grand mal seizures because of the damage
which results. By contrast, psychiatry is purposely perpetrating grand male
seizures, at the same time denying the damage in question.
·
ECT is inherently brain-damaging, with damage arising
from both the seizure and the electricity (see Breggin, 1991).
·
ECT always causes memory loss, much of it extensive
and permanent—both loss of memories from before the shock (retrograde amnesia)
and inability to remember new facts (anterograde amnesia) (see Burstow, 2015),
·
Contrary to what the shock proponents claim, not
a single form of ECT gets around the problems of brain-damage and memory loss. What
does the largest study in electroshock history show—and this to a degree of
statistic significance? Despite the
standard reference to new and improved, every single mode of ECT damages and
creates memory loss (see Sackeim et. al, 2007).
·
As thousands of courageous ECT survivors have
testified over the decades, most shock survivors are greatly impeded in their
ability to navigate life as a result of this putative “benign treatment”. A
typical day for a frighteningly large number is having to take notes all day
long for otherwise, by the time the day has ended, they will have no way of
knowing what has happened. More generally, an abundance of survivors routinely
forget people in their lives, cannot remember facts, ways of proceeding,
details, are stuck having to settle for a simplistic job despite having
prepared for something very different, for gone are many of the skills that they
have spent a lifetime acquiring (see ECT survivor testimony at https://coalitionagainstpsychiatricassault.wordpress.com/articles/personal-narratives/)
·
Electroshock is overwhelmingly an attack on women.
In this regard: Two to three times as
many women as men are subjected to electroshock. The psychiatric rationale
for this difference is that electroshock helps with depression and women are
more depressed than man. The truth, however, is, women are given electroshock
two to three times as often as men irrespective
of diagnosis. What is likewise significant, the very people who are
targeted for shock (women) are the ones typically most damaged by it (see Burstow,
2006).
·
The rational for delivering this terrible blow
to the mind and to the integrity of one’s being is that ECT allegedly prevents
suicide. The truth is that does not
lower the suicide rate (Black et al.,1989).
In fact, a study by Munk-Olsen, et al., 2007, suggests instead that in
the days after the “treatment”, it actually raises
the risk of suicide.
·
Electroshock is not effective even by the
psychiatry’s self-serving measures of effectiveness. As decades and decades of
studies show, within six weeks electroshock is no more effective than placebo
(for an extensive meta-analysis of the various effectiveness studies, see Ross,
2006).
In short, people are being permanently damaged —for nothing!
Virtually nothing! Hence the call to
arms.
What Makes This a
Good Time to Combat Shock?
A good time to mobilize on any issue is when you can detect
movement on it—which is exactly where we are at this juncture. The point is, after
decades of us activists largely spinning our wheels around shock, in the last
half year, the attack on shock has been gaining real momentum. What are we
seeing?—major law suits, legislative intervention, an uncompromising novel that
truly lays bare the reality of shock: All reasons to seize the moment.
The Law Suit(s)
The leading legal action is in California. And it is a class
action lawsuit against the manufacturers of shock machines. The filers of the
motion are DK Law Group. The major defendants are the giant shock machine manufacturers
MECTA Corporation and Somatics—and yes, these are giants! The allegations are:
negligence, failure to warn, and loss of consortium. Anyone can join the class
action who have sustained injury in California any time from May of 1982 onward
as a result of the negligence of the shock manufacturers (for further details,
including how to get involved, see David Karen, 2017).
Significantly while this action is restricted to California,
DK Law Group is committed to helping law firms in other states file similar cases.
And interest is growing in having comparable suits world-wide.
Herein lies a promising new direction and a momentum that we
have not seen before.
I would just add: A Canadian law firm as well is actively
considering launching a class action lawsuit, but unfortunately it would be
open only to Canadians subjected to electroshock in the last 2 years (clearly
an attempt to stay within the statute of limitations). What is promising,
nonetheless, the conversation is happening.
The Pennsylvania
Motion:
A promising development has likewise materialized in
Pennsylvania. In short, a bill has been introduced by state representatives
Stephen Kinsey and Tom Murt to prohibit the use of electroshock on children. A
fortuitous initiative which could reverse the current targeting of children and
youth.
Ways to Contribute to
the Momentum Identified to Date:
Targeted ways to contribute to the current momentum, include
a) taking part in or otherwise supporting the lawsuits and bills currently under
way, and b) doing the footwork necessary to bring about similar suits and
similar laws in additional jurisdictions. Obviously still other ways are
speak-outs, demonstrations, and educationals.
A Different Kind
Development: And a Special Opportunity: The Novel The Other Mrs. Smith
When we think of defeating shock, we quite rightly think of
law suits and legislative interventions—all of which is necessary and all which
is good. We also think of demonstrations and speak-outs—also good. Alas,
though, we tend to overlook the enormous power of art. Art is magical, opens up
a public space for understanding and transformation. Points can be made that otherwise
allude. Art moves and educates, and can stir the public to protest. Correspondingly,
if demonstrations or speak-outs sufficed to stir public indignation against
shock, we would have won the battle against shock long ago. And has a
development happened here as well—something that can add to the current
momentum? In a word “yes”. Enter the new novel The Other Mrs. Smith—and in the interests of full disclosure, to be
clear, I am the author.
The blurb on the
cover of The Other Mrs. Smith is as
good an initial introduction to this novel as any. It reads:
This novel traces the life experiences of a once highly
successful woman who falls prey to electroshock and subsequently struggles to
piece back together her life. Naomi suffers enormous memory loss; additionally,
an estrangement from her family of origin that she has no way to wrap her mind
around. The novel begins with her wandering the corridor of St. Patricks-St
Andrews Mental Health Centre (St. Pukes) faced with the seemingly impossible
challenge of coming to terms with the damage done her, as well uncovering the
hidden details of her life. It moves back and forth between a relatively happy
childhood in the legendary north-end Winnipeg of the mid-1900s and post-ECT
adulthood in Toronto. An exceptionally kind man named Ger who befriends Naomi
comes to suspect that important pieces of the puzzle of what befell her lurk
beneath the surface of writing in a binder of hers, which comes to be known as
Black Binder Number Three. What Naomi progressively comes to do, often with
Ger's help and just as often with the help of a very different and eerily
similar sister named Rose, is find ways to do justice to her life and to the
various people in it. Filled with a vast array of colourful and insightful
characters from a variety of communities—Toronto¹s Kensington Market of the
1970s, the 1970's trans community, north-end Winnipeg Jewry, and the ingenious
and frequently hilarious mad community—this novel sensitizes us to the horror
of electroshock, takes us to new levels in our understanding of what it means
to be human, and, in the process, leads us to question the very concept of
normalcy.
This is an engaging novel with broad appeal. At the same
time, it drives home the horror of shock in a way not seen in fiction before. We
see the effects of this “treatment” play out over the span of the heroine’s
life. We see the effects on the next generation. And we come to know the reality of shock from
the inside—not just the outside—for the novel is narrated in the first person
by a fictional shock survivor. Moreover, the sexist nature of this “treatment”
is inescapable.
How I came to write this novel, I would add, is itself informative.
I was part of the big 1980s push to abolish shock. Now there were moments back
then when it looked as if us activists were on the verge of winning. Then I saw
us totally lose the momentum. For the next several decades, like others in the
struggle, I continued to push for the abolition of shock with very little promising
materializing, when one day the idea of writing an ECT-centred novel narrated
in the first person occurred to me. Now I knew that a first person narrative
about someone badly harmed contravenes the inherited wisdom of what is possible
to pull off in a work of fiction, but in short, I decided to do pursue this seemingly
impossible project anyway.
Soon after making this decision, I phoned Toronto shock
survivor and long time activist Carla McKague and told her what I was doing. “For
God’s sake, Bonnie, do it,” she insisted. “We have never had anything like
this. What you are describing is a novel that the movement direly needs.”
Whereupon, I threw my heart and soul into this project for the
next two years. However, problem after problem kept materializing. And I soon
realized why a novel of this sort had
been declared something that should not be tried. What emerged was often
overwhelming and just as often confusing.
Anyway, the time came when I again called Carla to tell her
that I was going to have to stop for it just wasn’t working. Her answer was, “Bonnie, don’t stop. The
movement, it absolutely needs this novel.” And understanding her point only to
well, back to the drawing boards I went.
Two years later and after considerable work, again I felt the
urgent need to stop—this time not so much because it was not working, though
there were problems of this nature too, but because it was just too hard, just
too agonizing. What went along with
this, there was an enigma at the very centre of the project: Namely, while I myself
could tell Naomi’s story, the fictional narrator into whose head I had placed
myself was often at a loss how to tell it precisely because of the memory
impairment, precisely because of the damage done to her by shock.
A related issue is that there were moments when I felt that
I could not endure another second of being inside the head of someone whose
memory was this impaired. To put this another way, I did not want to have to
keep facing dead end after dead end. How wonderful it would be to get my life
back!, I found myself thinking. And to
get it back, all I really had to do is give up writing this novel. Now for a
brief moment there, that is precisely what I determined to do—when suddenly the
realization struck me like a thunderbolt.
Yes, of course, I could get my life back. But those of you
who are shock survivors, you do not have the same option, do you? That is, you do
not have the luxury to get your lives
back. And if you can’t do it, then neither should I. Herein lay the moral
imperative.
It took me almost ten years to complete this novel and to
land a publisher, but the longer I worked at it, the better, the richer, more
fulsome the novel became, what is particularly telling, with the very
difficulties that had originally led to me declare the writing of this novel an
impossibility being exactly what allowed this novel to become rich, multi-levelled,
and potent. In fact, soon it was evident
not just to me but to everyone around me that what had emerged was nothing
short of “dynamite”.
Fast forward. The novel is now out, and yes, my sense is
that it genuinely has the power to motivate the public—it is that sensitizing, that powerful--but only if it
is widely read. Hence my own current campaign.
If after reading the novel, you too become convinced of the
importance of ensuring that this novel is widely read, here are some ways that
you can help:
1)
Write a review on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca and encourage
others to do the same (if over 100 of
these materialize, the novel will indeed start to take off).
2)
Follow me on twitter and re-tweet the quotations
from the novel that I post.
3)
Resend messages that I post about it on Facebook.
4)
Email information about the novel to friends, post
it to listservs; write blurbs about it on Facebook, on your blogsite, on your
personal webpage.
5)
Write a full scale review for a major publication.
6)
Give it as birthday and Christmas presents to your
loved ones—and do remember, Christmas is just around the corner.
7)
If you are part of a book club, look into
getting The Other Mrs. Smith on the
agenda.
8)
Put in a request for your local library to
purchase a copy; also hook up with women’s and trans centres in your area and
encourage them to have copy on hand.
9)
In any demos and other actions that you mount in
support of the current move against electroshock—and I hope these will be
legion—do consider reading a passage from the novel.
10) Get
in touch with literary and media figures that you may know with the goal of
interesting them.
In Ending
This article has provided a brief summary of what is wrong
with electroshock and why it should be abolished. It has clarified what makes
this an optimal moment to act while articulating the momentum that is building.
And in the process, it is has introduced you to current actions to which you might
contribute—a ground-breaking class action law suit, a legislative bill that
could help to safeguard our children, and finally, a novel (The Other Mrs. Smith) that has the
potential to do heavy lifting for us.
That said, to end this article as it began, with a quotation
from the novel, what follows are the opening words of the fictional heroine Naomi,
ushering you into the world of what was I call the novel The Other Mrs. Smith and what she calls her “memoire”:
My name is Naomi, Nomi for short. Not
two years ago I was at a public meeting in Toronto where an aged woman looked everyone
straight in the eye and asked, “After all our years of service, is this what we
have to look forward to?” Two months later, a far younger woman who is ever so
precious to me called with an urgent request. “Write about everything,” she
pleaded. “Do it for whoever—yourself, me, others at risk. Just do it.” Hence
this curious journey on which we are embarking.
Now in the sweep of literature, there
have been many unusual, one might even say “oddball” narrators—corpses, the
cross on which Jesus Christ hung, even—and I kid you not—a fish. By these
standards, I am a fairly everyday narrator, for as best I can make out, I am
neither the holy rood nor any kind of fish—well, leastways not since I last
checked. What I am is a sixty-five-year-old activist with holes in my head and
a whopper of a memory problem. And that is the crux of the matter. But enough
said.
This is one of those stories, you see,
best left to unfold on its own. Like a surprise autumn sunset. Like a murder at
dawn. I would only point out that there are depths here to plumb, truths to
probe. Step into my world, additionally, and you will quickly find yourself
rubbing shoulders with a vast array of some of the most endearing and fascinating
souls that a person could hope to meet—some housed like Gerald, some from the
streets like my buddy Jack who could always roll the meanest cigarette in Turtle
Island. Ah, but all in good time.
Now I could
begin almost anywhere—when I discovered the films of Ingmar Bergman, when I
fuckin’ rediscovered the films of Ingmar Bergman—but if I am to trust in that
old Spenser formula, “where it most concerneth me,” there is really only one place
to begin: When I first started crawling out of the void. When those glimmers of
consciousness first came upon me in the opening days of March 1973….
[For this article and other
Burstow articles, see http://bizomadness.blogspot.ca/]
REFERENCES:
Black, D. et
al (1989). Does electroshock influence mortality in depressives? Annals of Psychiatry, I, 165-173.
Breggin, P.
(1991). Toxic psychiatry. New York:
St. Martin’s Press.
Burstow, B
(2006). Electroshock as a form of violence against women, Violence Against Women, Vol. 12, No. 4,
2006: pp. 372-392
Burstow, B.
(2015) Psychiatry and the business of
madness. New York: Palgrave.
Burstow, B.
(2017). The other Mrs. Smith. Toronto: Inanna Publications (https://www.inanna.ca/catalog/other-mrs-smith/).
Karen, David
(2017). Electroshock Therapy Class Action Filed (see https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/10/electroconvulsive-therapy-class-action/).
Munk-Olsen,
T., Laursen, T., Videbech, P., Mortensen, P., & Rosenberg, R. (2007). All-cause
mortality among recipients of electroconvulsive therapy. British Journal of Psychiatry, 190,
435-439.
Ross, C.
(2006). The sham ECT literature. Ethical
Human Psychiatry and Psychology, 8, 17-26.
Sackeim, H.
et al. (2007). The cognitive effects of electroconvulsive therapy in community
settings. Neuropsychopharmacology, 32, 244-255.
Whitaker, R.
(2002). Mad in America. New York:
Perseus Books.