MORE ABOUT THE OVERUSE OF DANGEROUS ECT

ECT

I can acknowledge literally that today’s ECT is not my grandmother’s ECT as my grandmother suffered profound memory loss when she was given Electroconvulsive therapy. And I believe my hero Kay Redfield Jamison said somewhere she would be willing to undergo it in cases of extreme depression. It obviously can be an effective treatment for some — see http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/electroconvulsive-therapy. However, I have never been in an inpatient ward where it seems to be being employed so frequently. I do not have the medical authority to judge whether my co-patient’s depressions warranted the treatment or not. I can say that it seemed unusually common as a treatment and that a person of some authority who is familiar with the unit told me that it was believed by many that this for-profit hospital was using the treatment excessively in an attempt to help cover the costs of the equipment although the CEO whom I spoke to recently said this is not so and she may correct, 

But ECT is no harmless treatment. Read all about how it can still  cause long term memory damage- 

But Centennial Peaks was especially brutal in this potentially dangerous treatment.,

Apparently you have to fast 20 hours before you have the treatment. One day as a co-patient was waiting for his/her treatment, the treatment was delayed. Watching this person experiencing full on starvation was painful enough — and fasting is entirely contraindicated for someone with a mental condition. It is no wonder that the great bipolar genius Virginia Woolf who was most insightful into her condition pointed out that one of the best ways to work against mania was to eat continuously, a statement supported by Ayurveda and probably by most Western physicians as well for anyone with issues of psychosis. As time went on and on, the co-patient suffered and suffered. I myself broke down and begged the nursing station staff to help. Why coudn’t they just let her/him eat and skip it? My co-patient also confided to me that he/she did not want to undergo ECT anymore but was afraid that if he/she refused, she/he would be sanctioned. I beg CPH to please stop forcing ECT on people who don’t want it!


ECT is also abused elsewhere!!!!!! This is a story from Australia  https://www.change.org/p/help-save-garth-daniels-from-brutal-electric-shocks-and-toxic-brain-chemicals

Stop Garth Daniels from violent, forced and life-threatening mental health treatment in the State MHS. Return him to a caring family situation and implementing a  nonviolent, humane management plan and treatment. This will immediately & significantly improve Garth's quality of life, and most probably also save him from self-harm or being harmed by other patients - and save you, the taxpayer, upwards of $1 million per year.

Garth Daniels has been in and out of state psychiatric hospitals for the last 20 years. He is now 40. 

He has been seen by a huge number of psychiatrists and possibly by more than any other patient in the history of psychiatry in Australia. 

The direct costs of his treatment are in the order of $1.5 million per year of taxpayers’ money. 

A recent private, independent psychiatric report concluded that Garth Daniels does not have  schizoaffective disorder and although he has been subjected to 2 decades of standard treatment for schizophrenia (including forced electric shock therapy, harmful psychotropic drugs and forced bed restraints) he has totally failed to respond in any predictable way. 

Once in hospital, he is given drugs that cause him incredible distress and so his reaction is to panic and become hostile. This is misconstrued that he is a violent person. Allegations of violence are perpetuated in the hospital... which is a direct result of inappropriate management. 

The general consensus of people who know Garth well - and the private psychiatric report mentioned above supports this view – is that he is a shy person with significant interpersonal anxiety. 

He is not a violent man and he is definitely not a criminal. 

Garth Daniels has an Advanced Statement (dated 19 09 2014) in which he explicitly stated that “I do not consent to ECT under any circumstances – lesions in left lateral ventricle/ memory problems. I do not consent to clozapine due to high cardiac risk – enlarged ventricle – adverse reactions”.  And yet the treating staff continue to ignore Garth’s legal wishes and the wishes of his father Bernard, who has medical power of attorney. 

His current treating staff have run out of options... recycling failed treatments... but refuse to accept the views of the patient Garth and the medical power of attorney Garth assigned to his dad. 

There are alternative, less restrictive management and treatment options ...but, the hospital services refuse to change their destructive path of damaging Garth’s brain.

They also want to take over the Guardianship of Garth’s affairs! If this happens his treatment will be even more secretive.  Why in hells’ name would they want to do this unless they have something to hide? 

Under the current treatment regime, Garth’s future is grim. He has been suicidal in the past and it seems unlikely that he would want to continue his current dreadful life indefinitely. 

His family and private psychiatrist believe there is only one other realistic life-saving possibility for Garth - that his management should be transferred immediately to a psychiatrist with particular expertise in managing withdrawal from psychotropic drugs, in conjunction with psychological management of his anxiety problems. It is painfully obvious that the psychiatric hospital / State mental health system is not able to provide this form of management or duty of care. 

We request that Garth Daniels be transferred immediately to the care and treatment of the private psychiatrist/ psychologist that his family have recommended. 

We strongly believe that Garth Daniels life is currently at risk from either suicide or the effects of his forced, brutal treatment in hospital. abused elsewhere!

Wrong Meds Part Seven -- Other Patients

You'd be surprised. People who have been recently psychotic like being aware of what medications they are taking and why as much as those of you who don't have freaky mystical experiences to share with your friends.


This incident broke my heart.

One of the patients was sobbing. They had given her  Cogentin (Benzatropine) without the antipsychotic Haldol (Haloperidol) it usually accompanied as a side-effect reducer. No one thought to tell her why. She didn't even know what each of the medications were doing. She was very frightened and disempowered.

I and another patient answered her questions best we could and we agreed it was strange.

Was the absence of Haldol another mistake? Maybe. But could they have at least let her know what was going on. Didn't that Hippocrates person say something about involving the patient in their own care? What gives these facilities the arrogance to think that they know better than us about what we need and need to know?

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Centennial Peaks Acute Impatient Unit must go!

Wrong Meds Part Five -- Most Egregious!

You do not, ever ever stop someone cold turkey on Lithium. But that is just what Centennial Peaks did. This was the reason I had to get myself out of there as soon as I could. So I could take the meds I needed. Shocking? Yes. Here's the story.


As chronicled in Eva Edelman’s volume,  Natural Healing for Bipolar Disorder, just about every bipolar person and arguably most people need some kind of lithium in their diet. Countries with higher lithium in their water tend to have fewer people with mental illness As Edelman’s book shows, lithium orotate is a more bioavailable form than the typical lithium carbonate and is highly recommended as it is more powerful at smaller dosages. Lithium is amazing medicine, and when in the orotate form that is safer, it is still the gold standard for bipolar disorder. Seroquel can stop the mania, but it is lithium that maintains the balance and is the best medication for bipolar proven to prevent suicide —  It is known that bipolar patients who have recently experienced mania are at higher risk for suicide.

Patients are always told that they should never never suddenly stop taking lithium. According to the WebMd page on lithium carbonate, Stopping lithium therapy suddenly increases the chance that symptoms of bipolar disorder will return. The dose of lithium should be reduced gradually over at least 14 days.

Yet, I was denied access to lithium, a drug I have been faithfully been taking since May 12, 1991. This is about as criminal as denying insulin to a diabetic.

The unit allowed me to take my usual dosage of Lithium Orotate for one night and then decided to stop it because the lab could not ascertain whether the pills were in fact lithium orotate. Very well,

the unit has that right. But did they offer me any other form of lithium from their well-stocked pharmacy? No, they did not.

We have now left the realm of mere stupidity and have entered the realm of MALPRACTICE. 

Some Chickens in Boulder Have it Better -- Lack of Fresh Air for Non-Smokers

At Centennial Peaks it is hard for non-smokers to get fresh air!

I do not think it is necessary to demonstrate the importance of fresh air and natural sunlight for anyone’s health and particularly for patients with psychiatric challenges. European sanitariums and even the famous MacLean hospital in Massachusetts use nature as healing. However, just as with prison inmates, patients do not have full privileges initially.^[1]

Until the patient has seen a doctor, they are not allowed outside to the courtyard with the basketball court. And even so this access is highly limited (once a day it seemed) in comparison with the the number of times in which smokers are permitted outside during the numerous smoke breaks (at least four times, perhaps even more).^[2] As a non-smoker with sensitive lungs, if I had not seen a doctor or had missed gym time, I had no other recourse to obtain fresh air except when it is clouded with smoke. As I explained this to a staff member with long smooth dark hair she sharply told me, “You do have a choice.” A choice between no fresh air and polluted air? I also begged staff to permit me a scant two minutes of fresh air before the smokers came in and this was summarily denied.

---

^[1] On the sociology of the psychiatric ward, Erving Goffman,. Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. Aldine Transaction, 1968.)

^[2] The frequency of these smoke breaks, far greater than I have witnessed in other impatient units, combined with the unit actually supplying cigarettes is rather curious. It remains shocking that the unit is happy to supply a deadly drug yet as will be seen shortly, will deny me my lithium.

Would you?

Would you want a heart surgeon to operate on you or a loved one who did not know all the latest research? Would you want a brain surgeion to operate on you or a loved who also was not up to date?Would you want an obstetrician or midwife who was stuck in the 19th century to help you or a loved one have a baby?

The knowledge of the doctors I met at Centennial Peaks was vastly inferior to my own, a patient. They didn't even know what lithium orotate was or that Eva Edelman who is at the forefront of
Bipolar Natural Healing considers it superior to lithium carbonate. They didn't even know anything about 5-HTP which supports Serotonin production and is one of the biggest bipolar godsends, depending on your specific profile. They didn't know that gluten free and sometimes dairy free nutrition can literally prevent or reduce mania. And they didn't know that the use of ECT, even today is far from harmless.

If you don't think a mental health patient should be subjected to ignorant doctors, come and join my campaign to shutdown Centennial Peaks Acute Impatient Unit in Louisville, Colorado. And then we can target and educate all the other Bad Psych Wards.

People who are having a tough mental time deserve the very best treatment!

Hippocratic Oath -- Not followed by Centenniel Peaks

The Hippocratic Oath is a sacred doctrine. It says that the patient is part of the healing process -- not merely someone the doctor or ward does things to.  Centennial Peaks as I will describe in full imposed its treatment upon patients without their input. This must stop. It must stop in Centennial Peaks and it must stop everywhere. Without the participation of the patient, healing cannot occur.

 First I would like to quote  from Hippocrates from his work Epidemics.

The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future - must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm. The art consists in three things - the disease, the patient, and the physician. The physician is the servant of the art, and the patient must combat the disease along with the physician.

I will now quote from the Modern Version devised in 1964 by the curiously named Louis Lasagna and used in many medical schools.

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

•I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

•    I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

•     I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

•    I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.

•    I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty.

•     Above all, I must not play at God.

•     I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick. I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure. I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm. If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.