The Shocking Truth of Electroshock
In the 1900s, asylums were defined as a hospital for people with mental or emotional problems. Mental institutions, asylums, and madhouses are examples of different terminology used to label these types of places. These were places for people with slight or severe mental illnesses and, or other disabilities to go, so society would forget about them. According to scholars Morris Schwartz and Alfred Stanton[1], therapy is the way to go when it comes to treatments in mental institutions. U.S mental institutions in the 1900s were using non-lethal treatments like electroshock therapy with the aim of putting their patients back into the public.
To start understanding electroshock therapy, you must know what it is. Electroshock or electro-convulsion therapy is use of electrical currents on the brain to make convulsive seizure occur. Electroshock therapy is not randomly given to a patient, it is only used for patients that are not responding to psychotherapy and or medication. It is mainly used for patients with severe depression. This therapy is a procedure but not invasive. It involves small electric currents being put into the brain. This helps the brain to start realizing and reversing the symptoms of certain mental conditions. For some, one time works for them and they never have to do it again, but for others it may become a monthly routine to receive this treatment. I believe that the bad connotation behind electroshock therapy is due to not understanding how it works and what it can really do for certain people.
Now for the history aspect of it. Ugo Cerletti is the father of electroshock therapy. The idea of how the mind works under mental illnesses and diseases were introduced to him, when he started working under psychiatry professor Ezio Sciamanna and later with Alois Alzheimer on a famous study of dementia in 1929 in Rome. In 1931, he wanted to know if the part of the brain Hippocampus, that is involved with memory and learning was involved in epilepsy. The only way to find out how would through dogs. To conduct this experiment, he would “induce epileptic fits on dogs and then examine the tissue from the brain area.” (Healy, David & Shorter Edward, p.34). This proved not be efficient or ethically right due to the electric currents being too strong for the dog’s hearts and killing them during the experiment. In 1937, Cerletti and his assistances wanted to try electro-convulsions on one more animal, pigs. They learned that pigs didn’t die from the shock but merely stunned them and cause a convulsion on them. This would be the lead that they needed to move to practicing it in psychiatric wards.
On April 11, 1938, a patient named Enrico X was admitted into the clinic. He would soon become the first person ever to receive electroshock therapy. “Arms tied. The electrodes are attached to his temples with a rubber band” (Healy, David & Shorter Edward, p.34). They introduced the treatment with 80 volts of electricity at a slow increase. He did not have convulsions, only started singing out loud and not able to respond to questions. April 20, 1938 Cerletti and his team attempted it once more on Enrico after treating a female patient. This time giving 92 volts of electricity all at once for less than a second. At that voltage, you would think it would have mutilated his brain. But after about an hour Enrico was able to move his limbs, speak, do simple instructions, and walk back to the ward. The therapy was a success. On June 17th, Enrico X was able to walk out the ward and become a part of society once more.
But there were errors that occurred in this type of therapy. In March 1940, Enrico X’s wife sent a letter to Bini one of Cerletti’s assistance. It said that he had been put back into an institution about two years after the experiment. It also has been mentioned that Cerletti had some inaccurate reports on his electroshock therapy. He had made his reports seem better than it actually was for the press. For example, Cerletti said there was only two treatments that failed on Enrico X, but his assistance’s notebook says something completely different. It also has been said that many have tried to take credit for being present during the experiment and giving inaccurate reports. So, the succession of electroshock therapy is actually quite altered so you must keep that in mind when doing research on an intriguing subject like electroshock therapy.
Electroshock therapy has a long and complicated history. It has been tested on different animals and humans with success rates. In today’s medicine, electroshock is still practiced but has been modified for better outcomes.
[1]Alfred Stanton and Morris Schwartz, The Mental Hospital(New York Basic Books, Inc., n.d.).
[2]Edward Shorter and David Healy, Shock Therapy A History of Electroconvulsive Treatment in Mental Illness(Rutgers University Press)
