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ECT Use to Treat Mental Illness

This paper is a discussion of the question: Should electroconvulsive therapy be used to alleviate symptoms of mental illness? Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) was originally called electroshock therapy when it was first introduced as a treatment for severe cases of psychopathology in the 1930s. The process consists of administering varying jolts of electricity to the patient, jolts which interfere with the body's natural electrical transmissions and disrupt the patient's behavior. Early use of such therapy was extremely primitive, and electroshock fell out of favor with both the medical community and the general public. More recent research into the functioning of the brain has renewed interest in ECT as a means of treating some forms of mental illness, especially depression. This paper will argue that, despite some glowing reports sparked by this renewed interest, ECT is a dangerous and destructive technique, disrupting memory and causing other brain malfunctions, and should not be used under any circumstances.

Since the 19th century, science has experimented with a variety of health care uses for electricity, from treatments for hair loss to applications supposed to counteract impotence. While the prison system discovered lethal ways to execute criminals with electricity, the medical profession investigated how electrical impulses might enhance the quality of life. In the 1930s, psychiatrists began to study the use of electric shocks to handle extreme cases of mental illness, and, for a time, electroshock treatments were widely used in psychiatric hospitals to control a variety of violent behaviors and complicated diagnoses.

Early shock therapy consisted of administering large amounts of electrical currents to the patient's brain, as doctors experimented with the level that would produce significant effects without killing the patient. Experimentation continued because electroshock produced measurable results: violen...

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ECT Use to Treat Mental Illness. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 18:33, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1691173.html