Yesterday, London Psychologist, Professor John Read, published in Psychology Today, an update on how mental health professionals, people with a history of ECT and their care givers are responding to the UK's call to suspend ECT until they can prove that benefits outweigh the serious risks.

In his article, he highlighted "one psychiatrist, Dr Sandra Bink, who had two courses of ECT herself, wrote:

 "Today I resent myself for agreeing to receive ECT. My long-term memory was destroyed. Memories of childhood friends, memories of major events I attended, memories of my training as a psychiatric registrar, academic memories etc. I started struggling with simple spelling and calculations. I basically cannot recall an almost entire 3 years (2004-2006), including the relationship I was in at the time. I never told colleagues about this, as I felt ashamed. But I started talking to other people who had ECT and realized I am not alone.   . . . I can understand some of the negative responses by colleagues to this article, but I have to admit that I welcome their argument."

John goes on to detail several UK national organizations supporting ECT Patient Safety efforts. He says, "Our call for an Enquiry has now been endorsed by several key UK organisations, including the National Counselling Society, the National Association of Clinical Psychologists  and the Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry. Importantly it has also been supported by the UK's largest, and widely respected, mental health charity (NGO), Mind:

"At Mind, we back calls for a comprehensive review into the use of Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT), an archaic and potentially risky physical treatment that is still used to treat mental health problems in rare cases. We know that some people have found it effective for improving symptoms of mental health problems – particularly depression – when nothing else has worked. However, we still don’t know why it works or how effective it is. Some people who have had ECT may have found they experience adverse side effects that are worse than the symptoms of the problem they’re trying to treat, including short term or longer term memory loss".

Read the full article in Psychology Today.