Family is the basic unit of society. But what happens when a promised "safe and effective" medical procedure acts like a hardrive wipe of all experiences? Relationships rooted in shared experiences are destroyed. 275+ family members shared their experiences with #ECT and how it impacted their loved ones. This peer-reviewed article (published today) in Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. My dad, a gentle, soft-spoken, hero-of-a-man, had never previously been candid with me about his thoughts witnessing my ECT experience. When I asked him if he'd be willing to share a statement for the media about the article giving family members a voice, he sent me the following: “The immediate effects of my daughter’s ECT were startling: memory loss. We are, after all, the sum of our memories. She knew I was her father, but she did not remember anything about our relationship. I was told this would be short-term. They lied. Even worse was the long-term effect on her physical health. It was a prescribed massive electrical injury, again, and again, and again. Typical long-term results of multiple electrical injuries include neurological damage, depression, anxiety, PTSD, migraines, hearing loss, reduced cognitive abilities, and/or attention difficulties, along with chronic pain. She got most of those, plus some extra.” I wish our ECT experience was an anomaly. I wish that raw pain had been isolated to a single family to protect the others. Sadly, these survey results indicate more families were harmed in ways far worse than I was. This is why the @FDA must enforce their 2018 ruling adulterating ECT devices and @CMSGov must cut off funding until doctors have training in how to chose an electrical dose that can reliably replicate research findings on their individual patient with a unique head size and shape. The last survey response highlighted in the article is a devastating example of what can happen when a doctor isn't trained in how to choose a correct dose, the clinic isn't prepared for manufacturer identified treatment consequences, and the hospital's lawyers bury it. My dad's heartbreaking explanation of his witnessing my ECT experience could have been so much worse in this medically sanctioned Russian Roulette. #AuditECT @Chris_E_Harrop @LisaTMSA @ReadReadj @BasedMikeLee @MakeAmericaHA bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wil…

13 years in government school and an 18-year-old can’t build a house, work on a car, grow food, read a budget, or tell you how their own body works. But they can tell you their pronouns and why they’re depressed. That’s not education. That’s a factory for dependents. Bring back shop class. Home economics. Personal finance. Nutrition. Farming. Welding. Cooking. Changing a tire. Balancing a checkbook. A kid who can feed themselves, fix something, and keep a roof over their head is a lot harder to control than a kid who only knows how to fill out a form and wait for the next program. The system doesn’t want independent adults. It wants obedient slaves. Parents if the school won’t teach it, you will. You need to. Our children deserve self sufficiency and knowledge.

Highlights from recent German TV that looked at brain retraining for #MECFS. A doctor with #MECFS says the programme made her feel she just had to keep trying harder. She eventually suffered a severe crash. She is “angry” and says that these programmes are endangering people.

"Dr Lucy Johnstone, consultant clinical psychologist in Bristol, said: 'I have had a number of women clients who were prescribed ECT for distress related to rape or domestic abuse. This is not treatment. 'It is re-traumatisation, and it must stop.' Professor John Read, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of East London, said: 'Our findings show that women not only receive ECT more often but are also more likely to suffer its most damaging effects. 'These patterns cannot be dismissed as coincidence. They reflect systemic biases in psychiatry and underline the urgent need for a trauma-informed, feminist perspective on mental health care.' He added: 'Information about sex differences in risk and outcome must be routinely given to women and their families. ECT should not be the default response to women’s suffering.'" buff.ly/riiMacd

The psychiatric industry measures "success" by how much LESS you feel: Can't cry at your mother's funeral? Success! Don't care when your child is hurt? Treatment working! No empathy for your spouse? You're in remission! They've redefined mental health as emotional lobotomy.

The Lindsay Clancy Case... Who’s the Bad Guy? Over the last two weeks, the Lindsay Clancy case has erupted into a culture war. I use that term because the debate is increasingly moving away from the facts of the case and toward one question: Who should be held accountable? There is a very strong argument that antidepressants induced the psychosis that led Lindsay to kill her children. Both defense and prosecution experts recognized a bipolar diagnosis. Her medical records documented worsening insomnia and mood shortly after SSRI exposure. She repeatedly texted family members that the drugs were damaging her brain. In the week before she killed her children, she was even frantically Googling whether psychiatric drugs could damage her brain. What seems to bother many people on the right is that, if Lindsay is found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity, there may be no obvious “bad guy” who goes to prison. Three beautiful children are dead. Morally, that feels intolerable. So the reasoning becomes: someone must pay, and therefore Lindsay MUST be convicted. I strongly disagree. But there is a bad guy here. The problem is that the bad guy is not one person. It is 30 years of poor mental health leadership in the United States. It is 30 years of doctors failing to stand up to the pharmaceutical industry’s message that mental health problems are best treated with handfuls of drugs during 20-minute, transactional visits. For years, medical leaders allowed drug companies to sell doctors and patients the idea that depression was a serotonin imbalance that needed to be corrected with medication. That helped normalize massive antidepressant use while non-drug approaches were pushed to the side. They also taught doctors to downplay serious drug side effects. Dr. Jennifer Tuff’s notes reportedly described Lindsay as lacking “insight” because Lindsay believed the medications were making her worse, rather than accepting that her symptoms were simply caused by depression. Is it any wonder, then, that her antidepressant doses continued to be increased until she became completely psychotic, despite already having two bad reactions to SSRIs in October? In my view, this was a catastrophic failure of care. I hate the fact that three children are dead. And I absolutely believe there should be accountability. But convicting Lindsay of murder, if the drugs drove her into psychosis, does not fix the problem. That is what accountability is also about: creating a deterrent against future bad behavior. Throwing Lindsay Clancy in prison for murder is not going to prevent the next drug-induced homicide. But turning our attention to rampant overprescribing and the minimization of these drug risks might. Holding medical leaders accountable for doing an abysmal job of teaching doctors how to safely treat mental health conditions might. If we really want to prevent the next tragedy, that is where the focus needs to be.

Found my dream rides at the @EncinitasGov #Wavecrest Woody Meet! @OldSchoolBYU @Price_Georgia

Controversial treatment still used on 2,500 Brits a year as survivor says it 'felt like rape' dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-… @UELPsychLondon @PsychRecovery @MITUKteam @MindCharity @Mad_In_America @LisaTMSA

A perfect headline to highlight the absurdity of using a medical procedure with no evidence-based dosing consensus standards reliably replicated across the entire population on whom it’s used. #AuditECT

Source: More coverage of our ECT survey’s findings about women. Twice as likely than men to get it. Even less effective, and even more memory loss, than for men. And 81% of ECT psychiatrists are men. USA TODAY share.google/RB3tvf4xR31kaqe…

Comprehensive, balanced, account of ECT debate in @Observer Huge regional variation in use. Failure of ECT psychiatrists to provide research demanded by NICE. Prof @RichardBentall: "If you don't do proper trials you end up with all sorts of dangerous stuff"

Georgia resident Tony Mullis was traveling with his wife on an interstate near Macon on Monday when he spotted an abandoned U.S. flag in the center median. Mullis, who told Storyful he had both of his legs amputated after an explosion in 2011 during his second tour in Afghanistan, pulled over to retrieve the flag. "Seeing that flag lay there broke my heart because I see all who gave all for those colors to fly not lay on the ground like trash," he said.

Imagine the influence $24-25 million of advertising in a single hour of television buys, raising big questions about the medical ethics of Big Pharma media influence.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but nobody who actually makes something safe and effective, needs to keep telling people it’s safe and effective

Our responses to review by @rcpsych spokesperson Dr Braithwaite, @GeorgeKirov1 and other ECT enthusiasts, bemoaning low rates in Italy, England & Ireland, and attributing this to our research (a “campaign to discredit ECT”). Well done us! @PsychRecovery cambridge.org/core/product/5…

Just because they can prescribe it doesn’t mean they should — not without real safeguards or rehabilitation afterward. As a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor + ECT survivor (116 sessions) + researcher, I’ve lived the harm and now help others recover from it. We must Enforce the FDA 2018 Order and Build Post-ECT Rehab Pathways. #AuditECT

We understand online survey limitations. But after nearly 90 years without outinely assessing every ECT recipient for all identified serious adverse events, someone had to step up and conduct a retrospective mixed methods assessment. Categorically dismissing patient and family experiences doesn't build trust. #AuditECT

ECT uses intense electrical current to trigger seizures in the brain. The FDA tried to add safety rules in 2018, but manufacturers never delivered the required proof. As a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor living with progressive effects after 116 sessions, I see the need for real change. @AOTAInc @APTA_official @AmerPsychNurses @Mad_In_America What one improvement would you want to see for patient safety? Enforce the FDA 2018 Order and Build Post-ECT Rehabilitation Support. #AuditECT #PatientSafety

Every time I hear an Electroconvulsive Therapy provider defend it's practice as "settled science" Pointing to its having been used for nearly a century, I think of the historic use of mercury salts and the realities I face living in a body with electrical injury's broken sodium-potassium-ATP pump. doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.1582… @ReadReadj @marcjeschke @Ionic_Injury

Today I celebrate 11 years psychiatric medication free! In 6 months it will be 9 years without post-Acute withdrawal Syndrome (PAWS) symptoms after having taken 37 different drug combos #AsPrescribed over the wild course of 17 years for what was presumed "treatment resistant schizoaffective disorder bipolar type with catatonia." Gratefully, that horrific ordeal ended when a new (to me) insightful family physician suspected, probable fungal hepatic Encephalopathy and started me on antifungals. Within a week, there were ZERO "treatment resistant psychiatric symptoms"! I still adhere to a strict "Yeast Free" low glycemic lifestyle and enjoy a joy-filled life FREE from HE symptoms and PAWS. @_innercompass @ReadReadJ Today, I will be sporting my newly dubbed "Fungus Amongst Us" pants (after I hem them)! (ShroomBloom from @SvahaUSA) @AmerGastroAssn @jturnesv nitter.net/LiverFellow/status/151…