May 16: International Day of Protest Against Shock Treatment

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http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/03/may-16-2015-international-day-protest-shock-treatment/

I'm against shock treatment but the fact that the article talks about anti-psychiatry makes me uncomfortable. I'm against harmful treatments but not against psychiatry as a science.

I was shocked to see amongst the references given in one of the linked articles - an abstract where psychiatrists were advocating ECT as curative treatment for people with autism.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15288351

Fortunately no-one took this seriously in the years since. But how appalling that they were even taken seriously enough to get publication.

On my bad days I can see ECT being mainstream again for all sorts of "wrongs" if all the money now being spent trying to find cures fails or if we are in some post nuclear terrorism, martial law America. As frustrating as it is to be in a totally ignored age group, in that case it will be a good thing.

I posted this for the greater good of ending shock treatment. But I don't like that the organizers do what they say they supposedly against. Targeting everybody in a group.

Proponents of anti-psychiatry tend to view psychiatry as a pseudo-scientific institution of coercion, rather than a science in itself. Anti-psychiatry doesn't mean anti-neurology, anti-psychology, or even anti-pharmacology; it's opposed to using knowledge gleaned from these disciplines as the means and/or justification of oppressing people.

One of the problems with modern psychiatry may be some of the personality types who are particularly attracted to it as a profession. I've heard this concern expressed (ironically) by people in the profession - that it's a magnet for narcissists who get off on power and control. I have to say that I have met some who seemed to relish the power and control they had, and could be punitive to anyone who dared to challenge them in any way. How typical they were I don't know. I'm sure there must be some terrific ones out there though I have only come across one so far that impressed me as a person who truly had the best interests of his patients deeply at heart. He seemed to be the exception to the rule. I hope he isn't though...