Prescribing psychiatric drugs to older people is not the only legacy of psychiatric intervention in the care of elderly patient abuse.
The uncontrolled use of harsh methods of restraint. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT or electroshock) on the elderly also causes unnecessary suffering.
Some Points from Past
Jennifer Martin’s 70-year-old mother developed headaches and dizziness in 1997. She stopped eating and could not speak. The psychiatrist say she was shock by the recent death and needs electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to deal with the situation. Less than 24 hours after the therapy session, Jennifer’s mother died. The autopsy revealed that the problem was not depression but a pinched spine. “Shock therapy killed her,” Jennifer said.
Although ECT is rarely consider shock therapy by psychiatrists, it is nonetheless. Electrical discharges of 180 to 460 volts passed through the brain cause a colossal shock and permanent brain damage.
Psychiatrists openly admit that they do not know how ECT works. Despite this, they have no doubts about continuing to apply shock to people, especially the older generation.
Dr. Nathaniel Lerman, a former clinic director at the Kingsboro, New York State Hospital for the Mental Patient.
He warned that older people are the worst at tolerating ECT. He claims:
“This is the greatest harm, instead of treatment – on a national scale.”
And at the same time, people 65 years of age and older make up almost 50% of those who receive electric shock today.
In a 1991 electroshock hearing, psychologist Robert F. Morgan says that the “depression” of an elderly person is often exacerbated by fear of loss of memory or health, which are known to be hard hit by electroshock.
Survey of Psychiatrists and Psychotherapists
A survey of psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and private clinicians by the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK confirmed memory loss due to ECT use. Of the 1,344 psychiatrists surveyed, 21% indicated “long-term side effects and the risk of brain damage, memory loss, and intellectual impairment.
“Doctors at private clinics reported that 34% of the patients they followed many months after ECT were in “poor or very poor condition.”
Fifty psychotherapists were more outspoken about the effects of electroshock; some said that ECT “can cause personality changes and memory damage that make therapy difficult” and that “… ECT,
A review committee in the UK called ECT Patients Anonymous hailed the King’s College report as “a cold-blooded catalog of blatant incompetence.”Group spokesman Roy Barker described ECT this way: “An encounter with destiny, a short but vital twist in your life, a few seconds that, if wrong, can negate the quality of your entire life.”
Expert Advise
In 2004, psychiatrist Harold A. Scheheim, advocate for ECT, stated: “As specialists, we were more willing to acknowledge the possibility of death from ECT than the possibility of serious memory loss, even though negative effects on consciousness are a much more common side effect. ECT “.
Animal studies have also shown that ECT causes microscopic rupture of blood vessels and constriction of the brain. “Therefore, there is no need to discuss whether ECT causes damage in the brain. It’s just a matter of how little or severe the damage is and how much does it affect? ”
Dr. Ross argues that the existing ECT literature proves that “ECT causes tremendous damage to the brain, causes memory loss, and increases mortality; the number of suicides is not decreasing. “
A 1993 study found that ECT shortens the life of the elderly – “for two years after therapy, there is an increased risk of death for people over 80 who receive ECT as a treatment for depression.” According to a 1997 Canadian study, 27% of patients aged 80 and older who received electroshock died within one year of receiving this “treatment.”
In the United States, 65-year-olds undergo electroshock therapy 360% more than 64-year-olds. Unsurprisingly, the government’s Medicare insurance for electroshock therapy starts at age 65.
As a result, today, the psychiatric industry in the United States alone raises an estimated $5 billion annually for ECT. Nor do psychiatrists fear to accuse of abuse since any complaint of an elderly patient. Deteriorating health after ECT can be attribute to the patient’s age.
It is estimate that of the roughly 300 people who die each year from ECT in America, about 250 are elderly patients.
However, the major American magazine USA Today reports that doctors rarely cite shock therapy as a cause of death, even when the link is clear.
Restraint measures Are Fatal
Although treatment does not involve killing the patient. This happens almost every day in psychiatric institutions, especially those where severe restraint is use.
For decades, stories have surface of hospital patients dying from being tie tightly to beds and chairs with straps or being pin to the floor by nursing staff trying to “pacify” patients. In addition, relatives are practically not tell about the true circumstances of the death of their love ones.
In a statement to a California court in a 2002 restraint case.
Ron Morrison, a board-certified psychiatrist, said patients who resist are so exhaust that they risk having a heart attack.
An incredible scandal rocked Japan between 1994 and 1998 after discovering that private psychiatric clinic. Which were forcibly hospitalizing elderly people and illegally using physical restraints on them. One patient develop a potentially fatal illness after being subject to physical restraints for five days. He could not breathe, and therefore he was diagnose with pneumonia.
However, doctors at the hospital found that the patient had developed blood clots in his blood vessels. Use of restraint in a psychiatric clinic and you can easily find the via NPI Number on the search engines(online).
Restraints are used for selfish purposes, not to help the patient. A court hearing in Denmark revealed that hospitals that used means of restraint received additional funding for the treatment of patients. Harvard psychiatrist Kenneth Clarke reports that patients are often provoker to justify the use of restraint. In the United States, patient restraint measures mean a higher level of insurance — at least $ 1,000 a day. The more aggressive the patient becomes – or the more aggressively he becomes – the more funds the psychiatrist receives.
Therein lies the truth about why patients are subject to “four-limb restraint” per year.
Often after being given a drug known to provoke aggression without their consent.
Check out the infographic for more details;
