Posted by Sigismund on August 3, 2009, at 22:35:12
In reply to Re: Sorry to be dramatic but considering suicude, posted by Sigismund on August 3, 2009, at 22:25:40
It's a complete delight...... The history of psychiatry.
There is this, and it leads onto Harry bailey and Chelmsford, where 26(?) Australians were 'killed', as the Royal Commission described it, and hundreds damaged for life.>He wrote in his standard textbook An Introduction to Physical Methods of Treatment in Psychiatry: 'Many patients unable to tolerate a long course of ECT, can do so when anxiety is relieved by narcosis ... What is so valuable is that they generally have no memory about the actual length of the treatment or the numbers of ECT used ... After 3 or 4 treatments they may ask for ECT to be discontinued because of an increasing dread of further treatments. Combining sleep with ECT avoids this ...'. Sargant also advocated increasing the frequency of ECT sessions for those he describes as 'resistant, obsessional patients' in order to produce 'therapeutic confusion' and so remove their power of refusal. In addition he states: 'All sorts of treatment can be given while the patient is kept sleeping, including a variety of drugs and ECT [which] together generally induce considerable memory loss for the period under narcosis. As a rule the patient does not know how long he has been asleep, or what treatment, even including ECT, he has been given. Under sleep ... one can now give many kinds of physical treatment, necessary, but often not easily tolerated. We may be seeing here a new exciting beginning in psychiatry and the possibility of a treatment era such as followed the introduction of anaesthesia in surgery'.[10] Sargant's methods inspired Australian doctor Harry Bailey who employed Deep Sleep treatment at Chelmsford Private Hospital, eventually leading to the death of 26 patients. Bailey and Sargant were in close contact and apparently competed to see which of them could keep a patient in the depest coma.[11]
poster:Sigismund
thread:910034
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090801/msgs/910144.html