Let’s start with one effect that’s universal—memory loss. Memories from the past can be wiped out. But ECT can also impair the ability to learn and retain new information.

Shock psychiatrists don’t want to know the extent of the damage they are causing. There have been very few studies on permanent amnesia (lasting six months or greater) caused by ECT. Yet, when researchers look for amnesia as a result of ECT, they find it.

In order to deflect responsibility for the harm they inflict, psychiatrists blame the patients’ “underlying mental illness.” But they have trouble explaining away the collateral damage to the rest of the body, like abnormal heart rhythms, heart attacks and stroke. And what about the published studies that show that ECT doesn’t “work”?

In a letter to the FDA, shock doctors Richard Abrams and Conrad Swartz, who also own the ECT machine manufacturer Somatics, Inc., wrote that it is “not surprising that evaluations performed weeks or months after completion of the acute ECT treatment course usually fail to show a significant advantage for ECT.”

Yet, the shocks continue, under the guise of “continuation,” “maintenance” or “booster” ECT. A cleverly disguised moneymaking ploy for assaulting a patient’s brain over and over.