An Irish Psychiatrist speaks of his experience with treating people with acute symptoms of mental illness, his reservations about ECT and its grim European history in a letter to the editor of the Irish Times.

Madam, - The letter of June 28th from spokespersons for the Irish College of Psychiatrists and the Irish Psychiatric Association is headlined "ECT still a valuable psychiatric treatment". I beg to differ.
Nearly three years after I commenced training in psychiatry, towards the end of 1968, as I stated in my book, Music and Madness, "I began to have deep reservations about the efficacy of ECT and the long term damage which can ensue from this procedure. I was becoming increasingly uneasy about these crude forms of physical intervention; my feeling was growing that there must be a more humane way to work in psychiatry."

Read the entire article here.