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Electroshock Of Children Recommended By American Psychiatric Association, Human Rights Group Protests

By Heather Tooley
Published on: 10:23 PST, May 14, 2016

An epic debate over the American Psychiatric Association recommending the electroshock of children due to “normal” childhood behaviors is at stake. According to a press release by PR Newswire, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a non-profit, non-political, non-religious mental health watchdog, is fighting to stop the APA from using ECT on young children and teens.

On May 14, the CCHR led a protest against the practice at the APA convention in Atlanta, Georgia.

The CCHR is responding to the APA’s calling on the FDA to allow the electroshock of children who don’t respond to “treatment” (drugs).

According to the report, there are currently 8 million U.S. children being prescribed psychiatric drugs, with more than 1 million between the ages of zero to five. Children are being drugged “simply because psychiatry has pathologized normal childhood behaviors, and repackaged them as ‘mental disorders.’ The result? Millions of children being drugged for behaviors reclassified by psychiatry as ‘disease.'”

There’s a growing concern that children are becoming addicted to these drugs, with a substantial amount of them lumped in the same class of addictive drugs as cocaine, opium, and morphine. Alarmingly enough, the American Psychiatric Association hasn’t done anything to stop the epidemic. The association is now demanding that the FDA allow them to electroshock children who don’t respond to drug “treatment.”

This could mean that the electroshock of millions of children would be called on if they experience side effects from the drugs because they would be reclassified as “treatment resistant.”

Diane Stein, president of CCHR Florida, said this must not happen for numerous reasons — not the least of which ECT can cause all kinds of physical trauma and other health issues.

“We cannot allow this to happen and that is why members of the CCHR chapter here in Florida are traveling to Atlanta to join the protest,” Stein said. “According to the FDA, ECT can cause physical trauma (including fractures, contusions, injury from falls, dental and oral injury) prolonged or delayed onset seizure and complications, including heart attack and even death. Along with these possible outcomes are permanent memory loss, confusion and cognitive dysfunction. And yet the American Psychiatric Association wants to inflict this torture on children. This is simply brain damage being promoted as treatment.”

The CCHR’s mission is to remove abuses committed under the assumption of mental health and carry out patient and consumer protections. CCHR has been involved in enacting over 150 laws protecting individuals from abusive or coercive mental health practices.

Actress Kirstie Alley, who supports the CCHR, even spoke out on Twitter against the American Psychiatric Association’s call on the FDA to allow the electroshock of children.

She wrote, “HELL NO! You are not the cause of destroying this country APA!! YOU WILL NOT DESTROY OUR CHILDREN!”

Alley stands in firm opposition of the electroshock treatment and is urging followers to help stop the APA’s agenda.

Electroshock therapy was widely used in the early 1900s as a means of “changing brain chemistry” in the mentally ill.

The Mayo Clinic reports ECT as a procedure done “under general anesthesia, in which small electric currents are passed through the brain, intentionally triggering a brief seizure. ECT seems to cause changes in brain chemistry that can quickly reverse symptoms of certain mental illnesses.”

Many are hoping to stop the American Psychiatric Association from getting their way in allowing electroshock treatment in children.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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