Shock Therapy

From the bestselling author of No Logo—the gripping story of how America’s “free market” polices exploited crises and shock for three decades from Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973 to the "War on Terror." In her groundbreaking reporting, Naomi Klein introduced the term "disaster capitalism." Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic "shock treatment," losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. The Shock Doctrine retells the story of one the most dominant ideologies of our time: Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.

Shock therapy is making a comeback today in the treatment of serious mental illness. Despite its reemergence as a safe and effective psychiatric tool, however, it continues to be shrouded by a longstanding negative public image, not least due to films such as the classic One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, where the inmate of a psychiatric clinic (played by Jack Nicholson) is subjected to electro-shock to curb his rebellious behavior. Beyond its vilification in popular culture, the stereotype of convulsive therapy as a dangerous and inhumane practice is fuelled by professional posturing and public misinformation. Electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, has in the last thirty years been considered a method of last resort in the treatment of debilitating depression, suicidal ideation, and other forms of mental illness. Yet, ironically, its effectiveness in treating these patients would suggest it as a frontline therapy, bringing relief from acute symptoms and saving lives. In this book, Edward Shorter and David Healy trace the controversial history of ECT and other "shock" therapies. Drawing on case studies, public debates, extensive interviews, and archival research, the authors expose the myths about ECT that have proliferated over the years. By showing ECT's often life-saving results, Shorter and Healy endorse a point of view that is hotly contested in professional circles and in public debates, but for the nearly half of all clinically depressed patients who do not respond to drugs, this book brings much needed hope.

China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country’s rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book uncovers the fierce contest about economic reforms that shaped China’s path. In the first post-Mao decade, China’s reformers were sharply divided. They agreed that China had to reform its economic system and move toward more marketization—but struggled over how to go about it. Should China destroy the core of the socialist system through shock therapy, or should it use the institutions of the planned economy as market creators? With hindsight, the historical record proves the high stakes behind the question: China embarked on an economic expansion commonly described as unprecedented in scope and pace, whereas Russia’s economy collapsed under shock therapy. Based on extensive research, including interviews with key Chinese and international participants and World Bank officials as well as insights gleaned from unpublished documents, the book charts the debate that ultimately enabled China to follow a path to gradual reindustrialization. Beyond shedding light on the crossroads of the 1980s, it reveals the intellectual foundations of state-market relations in reform-era China through a longue durée lens. Overall, the book delivers an original perspective on China’s economic model and its continuing contestations from within and from without.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia witnessed a dramatic increase in psychotherapeutic options, which promoted social connection while advancing new forms of capitalist subjectivity amid often-wrenching social and economic transformations. In Shock Therapy Tomas Matza provides an ethnography of post-Soviet Saint Petersburg, following psychotherapists, psychologists, and their clients as they navigate the challenges of post-Soviet life. Juxtaposing personal growth and success seminars for elites with crisis counseling and remedial interventions for those on public assistance, Matza shows how profound inequalities are emerging in contemporary Russia in increasingly intimate ways as matters of selfhood. Extending anthropologies of neoliberalism and care in new directions, Matza offers a profound meditation on the interplay between ethics, therapy, and biopolitics, as well as a sensitive portrait of everyday caring practices in the face of the confounding promise of postsocialist democracy.

Kitty Dukakis has battled debilitating depression for more than twenty years. Coupled with drug and alcohol addictions that both hid and fueled her suffering, Kitty's despair was overwhelming. She tried every medication and treatment available; none worked for long. It wasn't until she tried electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, that she could reclaim her life. Kitty's dramatic first-person account of how ECT keeps her illness at bay is half the story of Shock. The other half, by award winning medical reporter Larry Tye, is an engrossing look at the science behind ECT and its dramatic yet subterranean comeback. This book presents a full picture of ECT, analyzing the treatment's risks along with its benefits. ECT, it turns out, is neither a panacea nor a scourge but a serious option for treating life threatening and disabling mental diseases, like depression, bipolar disorder, and others. Through Kitty Dukakis's moving narrative, and interviews with more than one hundred other ECT patients, Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy separates scare from promise, real complications from lurid headlines. In the process Shock offers practical guidance to prospective patients and their families, boldly addressing the controversy surrounding ECT and awakening millions to its capacity to heal.

Since the development of pharmacoconvulsive therapy in 1934 and of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in 1938, ECT has proven far more valuable than just the intervention of last resort. In comparison with psychotropic medications, we now know that ECT can act more effectively and more rapidly, with substantial clinical improvement that is often seen after only a few treatments. This is especially true for severely ill patients -- those with severe major depression with psychotic features, acute mania with psychotic features, or catatonia. For patients who are physically debilitated, elderly, or pregnant, ECT is also safer than psychotropic medications. The findings of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Task Force on ECT were published by the APA in 1990 as the first edition of The Practice of Electroconvulsive Therapy, inaugurating the development of ECT guidelines by groups both within the United States and internationally. Since then, advances in the use of this technically demanding treatment prompted the APA to mandate a second edition. The updated format of this second edition presents background information followed by a summary of applicable recommendations for each chapter. This close integration of the recommendations with their justifications makes the material easy to read, understand, and use. To further enhance usability, recommendations critical to the safe, effective delivery of treatment are marked with the designation "should" to distinguish them from recommendations that are advisable but nonessential (with the designations "encouraged," "suggested," "considered"). The updated content of this second edition, which spans indication for use of ECT, patient evaluation, side effects, concurrent medications, consent procedures (with sample consent forms and patient information booklet), staffing, treatment administration, monitoring of outcome, management of patients following ECT, and documentation, as well as education, and clinical privileging. This volume reflects not only the wide expertise of its contributors, but also involved solicitation of input from a variety of other sources, including applicable medical professional organizations, individual experts in relevant fields, regulatory bodies, and major lay mental health organizations. In addition, the bibliography of this second edition is based upon an exhaustive search of the clinical ECT literature over the past decade and contains more than four times the original number of citations. Complemented by extensive annotations and useful appendixes, this remarkably comprehensive yet practical overview will prove an invaluable resource for practitioners and trainees in psychiatry and related disciplines.

Few mental illness treatments are more reviled in the public mind than Electroconvulsive Shock Therapy. However, in reality, ECT is a safe and effective treatment for cases of clinical depression and catatonia that are unresponsive to drug therapy. Also, unlike drugs, ECT has relatively few side effects. The authors argue that it is time for this historically stigmatized procedure to be reevaluated. The authors make a strong case for greater professional and public attention to the procedure's benefits, offering historical coverage of ECT-related movements, legislation, public and practitioner sentiment and the introduction of competing treatments. This volume will not only garner the interest of mental health professionals, but will call on policy makers and ethicists to examine its arguments.

Electroconvulsive Therapy is widely demonized or idealized. Some detractors consider its very use to be a human rights violation, while some promoters depict it as a miracle, the "penicillin of psychiatry." This book traces the American history of one of the most controversial procedures in medicine, and seeks to provide an explanation of why ECT has been so controversial, juxtaposing evidence from clinical science, personal memoir, and popular culture. Contextualizing the controversies about ECT, instead of simply engaging in them, makes the history of ECT more richly revealing of wider changes in culture and medicine. It shows that the application of electricity to the brain to treat illness is not only a physiological event, but also one embedded in culturally patterned beliefs about the human body, the meaning of sickness, and medical authority.