FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE or MEDIA ADVISORY

MAY 16th INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST AGAINST PSYCHIATRIC ELECTROSHOCK

LONDON PROTEST

Psychiatric Electroshock (ECT) can be given against your will

in the UK and Worldwide.

Date: Saturday May 16, 2015 Houses of Parliament  (Old Palace Yard - behind Westminster Abbey) London SW1P 3JY

Time: 14:00 until 18:00

Place: Houses of Parliament

(Old Palace Yard - behind Westminster Abbey) London SW1P 3JY

Contact:  Cheryl Prax speakoutagainstpsychiatry@gmail.com 07961 852 913

Twitter: #stopshock    @stopshocknow

On May 16, 2015, from 2pm until 6pm, there was a demonstration at the Houses of Parliament against Electroshock  as a psychiatric ‘treatment’.

An infamous teddy bear from Vermont in his straitjacket was given ECT in the shadow of Big Ben by ‘nurse’ Cheryl Prax. http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1927306_1927313_1927345,00.html

22 protesters handed out leaflets and spoke to passers-by. Most people who stopped were sympathetic; most did not believe Electroshock still happens. A couple of professionals including an ECT anaesthetist could not understand why we were protesting but as Una Parker from ECT Anonymous in Leeds remarked – they only see the dazed patient straight afterwards and not many weeks after when the brain injury ‘high’ wears off and they sink back into despair worse than before as they have lost memories, education and cannot relearn as easily as before. Another protester came all the way from Scotland such was his determination to show solidarity.

Photos here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.873879749352517&type=1

The demonstration was part of a coordinated international event involving over thirty cities in nine countries on the same day. This historic event was organized by three shock survivors: Ted Chabasinski from California, Debra Schwartzkopff from Oregon, and Mary Maddock from Ireland. Protests began in Rotorua, New Zealand, early on May 16, and ended many hours later at an evening forum held in New York City. List of protests here:

http://ectjustice.com/protest.php

Psychiatrist Peter Breggin, who has written extensively about electroshock (also known as electroconvulsive “therapy,” or ECT) says that , “No one should be given shock treatment.” He cites many studies that show that ECT invariably causes brain damage, memory loss, and cognitive malfunction.  Furthermore, he notes that shock is never really voluntary,  both because of the coercive nature of being on a psychiatric ward, and because the patient after the first shock becomes docile and too confused to resist.

Doctor Breggin says that ECT “works” by damaging the brain.  Each treatment results “in a temporary coma and often flatlining of the brain waves, which is a sign of impending brain death... Abundant evidence indicates that ECT should be banned.”

John Read and Richard Bentall literature review, “Conclusions – Given the strong evidence of persistent and, for some, permanent brain dysfunction, primarily evidenced in the form of retrograde and anterograde amnesia, and the evidence of a slight but significant increased risk of death, the cost-benefit analysis for ECT is so poor that its use cannot be scientifically justified”.

One survivor has written: “Electroshock robbed me of my history and my future. I lost most memories of motherhood, of my twenty-eight year marriage, and my twenty-five year career as a trauma nurse, which is now over.  I know I am not alone.  This must be stopped.”

A Canadian woman wrote: “After 14 months, I returned home to a family I had no memory of. I didn’t know how to be a mother to my young sons or a wife to my husband.  I had to learn my name, how to speak, do up buttons, brush my teeth, and so on. I didn’t even know my own parents, sisters, brothers.  My social work career and law aspirations vanished.”

Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize-winning author who killed himself after complaining that psychiatric electroshock had ruined his career by destroying his memory.

"Well, what is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient."

Electroshock treatment is a crime against humanity and has no place in civilized society. In the UK most Electroshock is given to elderly women often without consent. The UN Rapporteur on Torture said that forced psychiatric treatment can be considered torture.

More information about the London event can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1629280310635711/