Lies in the LA Times about ECT

Yesterday's article in the LA Times called "The Future Holds More than Pills" touted the benefits of Electro Convulsive Therapy, or ECT. While I wasn't exactly "shocked" to see the LA Times following the party line of psychiatry, it still hit me that some people might actually believe that ECT could benefit anyone. So I wrote the following letter to the editor:

Citizens Commission on Human Rights has made a long-standing,
well-publicized offer to any psychiatrist, offering $10,000 to any psych who
would willingly undergo ECT. We've never had any takers on that offer,
despite psychiatry having one of the highest suicide rates of any
profession; suggesting that even severely depressed psychiatrists would
rather kill themselves than undergo ECT.

Fair and balanced reporting would have required more strenuous research into
the claims of the psychiatrists touting ECT. That would reveal what CCHR
has documented for the last 35 years. ECT doesn't work, it is harmful, and
it ought to be outlawed as treatment for the barbaric torture that it is.
Like slavery and rape, it has no place in a civilized society that respects
the rights of innocents.

Jeré Matlock
Broadbent, Oregon

We'll see if it gets published. I tried not to pull any punches.