CLEARWATER, Fla., Oct. 20, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a non-profit mental health watchdog supported by the Church of Scientology and dedicated to the eradication of mental health abuses, is calling for a ban on the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) amidst controversy over lack of proven safety and claims of brain damage. A trial that began this past week and is alleging that a South Florida psychiatrist left a cardiologist brain damaged after administering electroshock treatments has spurred CCHR to call for a ban on ECT.  The charges stem from allegations that in 2010 psychiatrist Dr. Praturi Sharma oversaw the administration of ECT to cardiologist Dr. Shaul Dadi without obtaining his patient’s informed consent.

The trial comes in the wake of a December 2015 proposed order by the Food and Drug Administration to reclassify the ECT machine to a safer category.  According to CCHR, research recently completed in the United Kingdom titled, “Electroconvulsive therapy reduces frontal cortical connectivity in severe depressive disorder”, concludes that ECT had “lasting effects on the functional architecture of the brain.”

Diane Stein, the President of CCHR Florida said, “Psychiatrists freely admit that they are not certain how ECT works but still insist on passing up to 450 volts of electricity through a person’s brain triggering brain-damaging seizures.”  Ms. Stein also said, “While a seizure can cause a feeling of ‘well-being’, it is this physical reaction that can temporarily mask mental disorders caused by ECT.”

“We are therefore calling for a ban on the use of ECT and demanding that those psychiatrists who have damaged and killed people be held accountable for their actions,” Ms. Diane Stein declared.

For more information about the damaging effects of electroconvulsive therapy please visit https://www.cchrint.org/2016/01/07/fda-looks-to-expand-electroshock-use/

About CCHR:

Established by the Church of Scientology and renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz in 1969, CCHR’s mission is to eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections.

It was L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, who brought the terror of psychiatric imprisonment to the notice of the world. In March 1969, he said, “Thousands and thousands are seized without process of law, every week, over the ‘free world’, tortured, castrated, killed. All in the name of ‘mental health.’”

Contact Info:
Name: Diane Stein
Email: publicaffairs@cchrflorida.org
Organization: Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Florida
Address: 109 N. Fort Harrison Ave 
Phone: (727) 442-8820

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