Quotes & Sayings About Electroconvulsive Therapy

In California, there was Atascadero State Hospital, constructed in 1954 at the cost to taxpayers of over $10 million (almost $110 million in today's money). Atascadero was a maximum-security psychiatric prison on the central coast where mentally disordered male lawbreakers [including homosexuals] from all over California were incarcerated. Inmates were treated at Atascadero by a variety of methods, including electroconvulsive therapy; lobotomy; sterilization, and hormone injections. Anectine was used often for 'behavior modification.' It was a muscle relaxant, which gave the person to whom it was administered the sensation of choking or drowning, while he received the message from the doctor that if he didn't change his behavior he would die (10). — Lillian Faderman

Undiagnosed DID patients received incorrect diagnoses of schizophrenia in 25% to 40% of cases in two large series (Putnam, 1989; Ross, 1989), while in one stores 12% and in the other 16% had received electroconvulsive therapy. — Colin A. Ross

Do you prefer fermented or distilled?
This is a trick question. It doesn't matter how much you like wine, because wine is social and writing is anti-social. This is a writer's interview, writing is a lonely job, and spirits are the lubricant of the lonely. You might say all drinking is supposed to be social but there's a difference, at one in the morning while you're hunched over your computer, between opening up a bottle of Chardonnay and pouring two-fingers of bourbon into a tumbler. A gin martini, of course, splits the difference nicely, keeping you from feeling like a deadline reporter with a smoldering cigarette while still reminding you that your job is to be interesting for a living. Anyone who suggests you can make a martini with vodka, by the way, is probably in need of electroconvulsive therapy. — Stuart Connelly

One of the leading theories of why electroconvulsive therapy is effective for most severe depressions is that it causes a loss of short-term memory - patients feel better because they can't remember why they were sad. — Daniel Goleman