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Shock therapy describes a set of techniques used in psychiatry to treat depressive disorder or other mental illnesses. It covers multiple forms, such as inducing seizures or other extreme brain states, or acting as a painful method of aversive conditioning. [1] Two types of shock therapy are currently practiced:
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a controversial therapy used to treat certain mental illnesses such as major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, depressed bipolar disorder, manic excitement, and catatonia. [1] These disorders are difficult to live with and often very difficult to treat, leaving individuals suffering for long periods of time.
In 1927, Sakel, who had recently qualified as a medical doctor in Vienna and was working in a psychiatric clinic in Berlin, began to use low (sub-coma) doses of insulin to treat drug addicts and psychopaths, and when one of the patients experienced improved mental clarity after having slipped into an accidental coma, Sakel reasoned the treatment might work for mentally ill patients. [3]
[24] The New York Times described the public's negative perception of ECT as being caused mainly by one movie: "For Big Nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, it was a tool of terror, and, in the public mind, shock therapy has retained the tarnished image given it by Ken Kesey's novel: dangerous, inhumane and overused". [25]
Kitty Dukakis, wife of former Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis and author of Shock, [13] a book chronicling her experiences with ECT [14] Thomas Eagleton, US senator and vice presidential candidate [15] Eduard Einstein (28 July 1910 – 25 October 1965) Albert Einstein's second son had ECT.
Cardiazol convulsion therapy was soon replaced by ECT all over the world. [7] Cerletti and Bini were nominated for a Nobel prize but did not get one. As a trace origin, galvanism may have been a more primitive form of ECT such that James Lind was among the first to suggest electroshock therapy for insanity in the late 1700s. [8]
Aversion therapy is a form of psychological treatment in which the patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort. This conditioning is intended to cause the patient to associate the stimulus with unpleasant sensations with the intention of quelling the targeted (sometimes compulsive) behavior.
A lobotomy (from Greek λοβός (lobos) 'lobe' and τομή (tomē) 'cut, slice') or leucotomy is a discredited form of neurosurgical treatment for psychiatric disorder or neurological disorder (e.g. epilepsy, depression) that involves severing connections in the brain's prefrontal cortex. [1]