Classics in ECT: Max Fink on Stigma in ECT 1997
"Classics in ECT" brings you this remarkably insightful essay on the origins of prejudice against ECT by Dr. Max Fink in 1997.
The pdf is here.
And from the text:
And this conclusion:
In this essay, Dr. Fink carefully traces the origins of the stigma and prejudice surrounding ECT, by reviewing the history of American psychiatry since World War II. He describes the impact of the "Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry" and the competing struggles between psychodynamics, psychopharmacology and somatic treatments.
This may be the best explanation ever written of all the factors that have gone into the needlessly tarnished reputation and "controversy" that follow ECT to the present day.
This is a must-read in its entirety (about 20 minutes).
ReplyDeleteThe below comment is from Dr. Max Fink, an "update" to his 1997 essay:
Comment to Prejudice Against ECT
This assessment of the prejudices against ECT was published in 1997. It cites the prejudice against "electroshock," the fears of electricity, and competition with psychotherapies and new pills. Since then, despite the psychologists’ litany of "memory loss", usage has increased world-wide. Treatment protocols are safe, quick, and feasible for outpatient care centers. In the US, treatments are financially supported by Medicare and private insurance. Reading the names of practitioners writing about ECT, many are newcomers to psychiatry.
These newcomers can accept inducing seizures as therapeutic despite the conflicts of experiences with epilepsy, commonly a basis for neurologists' hesitancy in adopting ECT. It has taken later generations to accept the paradigm shift from fearing seizures to accepting present practices as safe and effective. The hesitancy of post-World War II psychiatry to accept the new paradigm is consistent with the behavior of scientists described by Thomas Kuhn in Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that they are fixed with their present ideas. It takes a new generation to accept the science of a paradigm shift.