A Mad in America podcast.

MIA Radio interviews Professor John Read and Doctor Sue Cunliffe, participants in the 57th Maudsley debate held at Kings College in London on September 19, 2018.  Being debated was the proposed motion,  “This house believes that ECT has no place in modern medicine”.

Professor Read has undertaken several scientific reviews of the literature supporting the use of ECT and Doctor Sue Cunliffe. Doctor Cunliffe was a paediatrician until she herself underwent ECT, after which she became cognitively impaired and found herself unable to continue working in medicine. She now campaigns for the risks of ECT to be made more explicit and to directly address the professional denial of the damage that ECT can cause.

Click the play button below to listen.  Visit MadinAmerica.com to read the accompanying article by James Moore, along with the debate notes of Professor Read and Dr. Cunliffe.

I am Deborah Schwartzkopff, ECT survivor and founder of ECTJustice.com. I am interested in helping people that have been injured by electroshock to pursue medical malpractice suits or product liability suits.

I am not an attorney nor a para legal. But I have settled in three previous suits: a HIPPA suit, a discrimination suit, and a 2013 psychiatric medical malpractice suit.

I am offering my assistance if needed. You will be responsible for obtaining records needed to pursue this action.  I will not follow up with you until you have the information required to proceed.

To take advantage of this offer, follow the steps outlined below.  Your time to act is limited. See “Statutes of Limitations” below.

1. Fill out the ECT Questionnaire

You can find this on the ECTJustice.com website.

2. Establish extent of damages

Review this video on ECTJuctice.com before meeting with doctors This will help you to be able to discuss the mechanism of trauma in ECT if you run into difficulties in getting testing.

Print a copy of the letter from the help section of ECTJuctice.com (click here for printable PDF copy of letter). Sign and give a copy to your primary care physician to request the testing you will need to establish the extent of damages you sustained during your ECT sessions. Minimally, these three tests must be done:

• Neurological/cognitive testing. Have this done by a TBI (traumatic brain injury) specialist,
• EEG,
• MRI.

If you have the resources, it would be best to additionally have a SPECT and functional MRI done at a teaching hospital.

Get copies of all tests put on a CD at the time of the test, and take it with you. This is the actual test itself. They are happy to give you copy. When you see a psychologist for neuro/cog testing, ask for a copy of test outcomes along with any corresponding number values assigned.

You have a right to all these records. If there are issues in getting testing please contact me. I cannot help with funding, but I may be able to help with other issues.

3. Obtain ECT medical records

Review the medical records page on ECTJustice.com. Read about starting a log at end of the page. This will help should you run into any resistance. Remember that you are entitled to these records by law.

Request your records, keeping a log of every interaction as noted. You do not need every record type listed on the webpage. But, you do need ALL anesthesia consents and ALL consents for electroshock.

If you had any testing prior to ECT, such as a sleep study, MRI, EEG, eye evaluation, or EKG, request those results as well, even if they tell you the results are normal. These will be used as comparisons to the new tests.

If you run into difficulties obtaining testing or records you may contact me. But please get as much in place as possible before doing so.

4. Find Representation

Once you have copies of your testing and records, contact me at Deborah@ectjustice.com, and we can talk about your situation and how to proceed. If you need help I will draft a request for representation using your information. You can then submit to law firms in your state.

It can take persistence to find representation. However, it can be done with minimal effort by email.  And, we do have some interested firms in place.

Statutes of Limitations

Your time to file a law suit is limited. Every state has its own time limits.* Note that these limitations generally do not apply to minors.

Listed below are time limits for each state. If you have three months or more (need minimum of 3 months to get things in place) from time of last shock and can get tests done and records retrieved, then I will try to assist you.

Below are the states and their time limits.  In some states, the statute of limitations varies depending on the type of injury or when the injury was discovered.  These times are for reference only, and are subject to change by each state.

State	Statute of Limitation
Alabama	2 or 4 years
Alaska	2 years
Arizona	2 years
Arkansas	3 years
California	1 or 3 years
Colorado	2 years
Connecticut	2 or 3 years
D.C.	3 years
Delaware	2 years
Florida	2 or 4 years
Georgia	2 years
Hawaii	2 or 6 years
Idaho	2 years
Illinois	2 years
Indiana	2 years
Iowa	2 years
Kansas	2 years
Kentucky	1 year
Louisiana	1 year
Maine	3 years
Maryland	3 or 5 years
Massachusetts	3 years
Michigan	2 years
Minnesota	4 years
Mississippi	2 or 7 years
Missouri	2 or 10 years
Montana	3 years
Nebraska	2 years
Nevada	2 or 4 years
New Hampshire	3 years
New Jersey	2 years
New Mexico	3 years
New York	2 1/2 years
North Carolina	3 to 10 years
North Dakota	2 years
Ohio	1 or 4 years
Oklahoma	2 years
Oregon	2 years
Pennsylvania	2 years
Rhode Island	3 years
South Carolina	3 years
South Dakota	2 years
Tennessee	1 year
Texas	2 years
Utah	2 years
Vermont	3 years
Virginia	2 to 10 years
Washington	3 years
West Virginia	2 years
Wisconsin	3 years
Wyoming	2 years

*If you are outside of the USA I am also interested in assisting but you will have to review the time limits for your country. I will try to assist you but there are no promises in outcomes.

The California class action failed in the appeal process.  However, the DK Law firm is moving forward to represent clients who have sustained electroshock injury in California within the last two years. There are suits pending against the FDA around this issue as well.

Many Americans are unaware that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)—more commonly known as electroshock—continues to be widely utilized by U.S. psychiatry. In the current issue of the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, psychologist John Read and co-author Chelsea Arnold note, “The archetypal ECT recipient remains, as it has for decades, a distressed woman more than 50 years old.”

In a comprehensive review of research on ECT, Read and Arnold report that there is “no evidence that ECT is more effective than placebo for depression reduction or suicide prevention.” They conclude, “Given the well-documented high risk of persistent memory dysfunction, the cost-benefit analysis for ECT remains so poor that its use cannot be scientifically, or ethically, justified.”

This begs the question of why this brain-damaging electrical abuse of predominantly middle-aged women, unlike the sexual abuse of younger women and girls, is not today addressed by most high-profile feminists…

Read full article  in CounterPunch.

Bruce E. Levine, a practicing clinical psychologist often at odds with the mainstream of his profession, writes and speaks about how society, culture, politics and psychology intersect. His most recent book is Resisting Illegitimate Authority: A Thinking Person’s Guide to Being an Anti-Authoritarian―Strategies, Tools, and Models(AK Press, September, 2018). His Web site is brucelevine.net

KBOO radio host, Paul Roland, interviews electroshock survivor/activists Deborah Schartzkopff from ECTJustice.com, Mary Maddock, and Jane Rice.

Mary Maddock received ECT without informed consent just 3 days after childbirth. The shock “treatments” continued over a period of 6 weeks. “All this time I was treated as a guinea pig while I was on umpteen nueroleptics and other psychotropic drugs – on and off them as if they were smarties. My memory was severely damaged both long and short term.” After freeing herself from psychiatric treatments in 2000, she joined MindFreedom International and cofounded MindFreedom Ireland.

Jane Rice is a childhood shock survivor. She writes about shock and other psychiatric atrocities on her website, LifeAfterECT.com.

Click here to read accompanying article on KBOO.FM.

Click play button below to listen to program.

 

 

It is difficult to describe fully in words what I live with daily after having electroshock. I had to relearn and reteach myself many things. I live day to day, often in the moment, as I cannot recall very much of my past. I do not carry my history any longer. For the most part, what I know of my history has been parroted back to me by friends and family.

People will come up to me at times and start conversations as if we know one another, and I confabulate to cover my embarrassment in not knowing who they are. If others are with me they will tell me later that it was someone I used to know.

I do not experience memory any longer in the “reliving of the memory”. It is as if I read a sentence pertaining to a memory in a book that someone else wrote. I cannot remember conversations, books, movies, shared good times or bad times.

I have kept journals since 2013 and I have written about my difficulty in retaining memory. I keep copious notes, chalk boards, and voice recorders.

I used to be able to retain some memory for about a week. Now it is down to a couple of days. Days fall away into an abyss and the memories associated with them.

I am often told “you seem fine”. But that is the farthest thing from the truth if they knew. I do not recall even the significant events in my life that one looks forward to and loves to reminisce about.

Lost Family History

I have two grown sons. The knowledge and experience of their lives have basically been erased in my mind. I recently took a friend’s child to a play center where another family was having a birthday party for their child. I started to try to think of my own children’s’ birthdays and could not recall one. I became very distraught at this realization and began to weep. What presents were my child’s favorite? What did their cakes look like? What did they make me in school? What were their first words? What was it like to smell and hold them for the first time? What, did they want to be when they grew up? What about their proms? What about…?

Due to electroshock, memories of the day of my wedding, the birth of my children, etc. are lost to me. I do not keep photos of my family up in my home. It is too painful as I cannot tie memory to the events in the photographs.

A Lost Career

I know I dreamed of being a nurse since I was a small girl. My life as a nurse was my passion.  My goal was to become a flight nurse. I cared deeply about my patients, and would have done anything to protect them. Electroshock erased almost all memory of an almost 25-year career as well as my college education.

A Life Erased

My life as I knew it has been erased. Who I was has been erased. The experience of my closest relationships has been erased and is daily erased with each interaction.

I used to have a photographic memory. Now, based on neuro/cognitive testing, I have a 10% visual memory ability . An MRI reveals lesions and atrophy in the frontal and temporal regions where I had ECT. I suffer at times with panic attacks, agoraphobia, double vision, and can easily become disorientated in my surroundings. I have severe sleep issues and rarely dream any longer. I have periodic suicidal depressions (the risk of suicide doubles following ECT). I show abnormalities on the four neuro/cognitive tests that I have had done. In the results of one is a comment about “the magnitude of her cognitive deficits”.

At night when falling asleep I try to think about the past, and it often creates a sense of panic when I cannot recall these memories. I have to learn to let it go each day.

I have seen a therapist for the past couple of years and do not remember a single session. I can remember some excerpts from a  session, but it is out of context and any kind of time frame perspective. Any insights gained I have to get into one of my journals before it is forgotten. I often review my latest journal and many notes to keep me functional in my life daily. It is very difficult to describe this memory and cognitive losses. One feels almost disconnected from the emotions of memory and it is simply what I call a “thought memory” and not the actual re-living of the experience. When having an enjoyable conversation with a friend or family member, I often find myself wishing that I could hold onto the memory of this time with them, but I know it will most likely be entirely lost to me within a couple of days.

The Violations of ECT

My autobiographical history has been erased. Electroshock victims often will call this “ECT rape”. That is not an overstatement. I feel it is more a rape of the soul. The memory loss associated with this is global.

Like a rape victim, I deal with a great deal of anger at the arrogance of the medical establishment which allows this to take place and then covers for one another. This misjustice of patient care is criminal.

The Mental Health System & Electroshock

What I have learned in this mental health system around this issue of electroshock is that advocating for patients is the farthest thing from people’s minds. It’s about not rocking the boat. It’s the “we know what is best for you” attitude. It is abuse of power, and that abuse of power mostly impacts women. It’s about the way “it has always been done.” I say firmly, NO! Physicians, have a duty to warn, a duty to protect, and a duty to not cause harm. They are not warning, and they are not protecting. They are failing criminally here. All the support staff witnessing this and saying nothing are just as culpable. This would not be tolerated in any other patient population.

Psychiatrists tout this as life-saving. Likewise, is the cardiac defibrillator. Yet in the case of the defibrillator there has been responsible testing of both the procedure and device. To use a device and do a procedure without any FDA testing for safety or effectiveness, and withholding this from patients is inexcusable.

Psychiatrists using ECT inflict known traumatic brain injuries in patients, and claim it is beneficial.  At the same time they elaborate on neurocognitive and neuropsychiatric damages secondary to electrical trauma in their own literature.

Our memories are what make up a significant part of who we are. Mine are lost to me. I cannot recall the tenderness between friends in conversations and things shared, the looks of my children when they were happy or naughty, the nuance of a group of people and how it made me feel in a time, a good meal, a funeral of a loved one, or good books read.

I am not alone

We are not patients locked on some back ward of a state hospital. This is happening in many notable teaching facilities and at reputable HMO’s such as Kaiser Permanente. Many of us had families and careers before we came into this psychiatric system. Finding ourselves in difficult circumstances we turned to psychiatry for help. We believed what was told to us by physicians we entrusted with our care.  Do not think that this cannot happen to you. We have been lied to and our complaints resulting from this procedure have been discounted.

The courage and the resilience of my peers is noteworthy. We struggle daily to maintain our lives after this procedure, and want justice for what has been done to us.

It is important for my peers to be willing to speak out about this and bring attention to this issue. We should be angry, not ashamed, at what was done to us. There is a media page set up on this site that I encourage all involved around the issue of electroshock to fill out.

We are up against the FDA, the APA, and major health institutions that have made a great deal of money at this for decades. If we are not willing to speak out and garner media attention, it will be that much more difficult to bring an end to this. I encourage you to each reach out to media and share what has happened to you and continues to happen to others globally every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. I believe in speaking out that attorneys will see cause to bring future suits, and it will protect others who may be considering this procedure.

I am grateful to my peers for their support and strong Spirits. And I am encouraged by their courage and determination. No one has the right to rob another of the human right of a lived and remembered experience.