Columbia University psychologist and chief the department of biological psychiatry of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, Sackeim is an major advocate of electroshock.

The Lie:

ECT is the most effective anti-depressant treatment available. October 16, 1998 Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont.

Facts:

• In the same article, he concedes: What good is ECT if the benefits are not maintained? Relapse rates are far higher than has been appreciated in the United States.
• Dr. John Friedberg, a neurologist who has researched the effects of ECT for over 30 years, states, It is very hard to put into words just what shock treatment does to people generally.it destroys peoples ambition, andtheir vitality. It makes people rather passive and apathetic.Besides the amnesia, the apathy and the lack of energy [in the patient] is, in my view, the reason that[psychiatrists] still get away with giving it.
• Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus from the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, states, What is the science behind it? Zero, as far as I can see because when people have convulsions without electric shockit is a serious illness called epilepsy and doctors and neurologists go to great length to control that to stop it by giving them anti convulsion drugs.
• In John Horgans 1999 book, The Undiscovered Mind, Sackheim says of ECT, Were triggering a seizure in order to get the brain to stop a seizure. This explanation is probably the predominant theory right now. God knows if its true.
• On the February 19, 2005 Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees program, in a segment titled Overcoming Depression, Sackeim admitted, Well, unfortunately none of our treatments in psychiatry are cures. The best what we can offer is symptom relief.