The Ethics of Electric Shock Therapy in "Regeneration"

591 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: History Of Mental Illness During The Late 19Th Century

"Pat Barker's Regeneration: Is Electric Shock Therapy Moral?"

Psychiatry is a very abstract study. That is why they call it a "soft science." It's earliest roots are only decades, not centuries. In the novel Regeneration, by Pat Barker, their are two different types of therapy used in psychiatry at the time, electric shock therapy and communication therapy. Electric shock therapy is immoral. It is painful to the patient and does not have a a high rate of patient satisfactory. It is done against a patient's will. It usually doesn't work. Communication therapy is so much better than electric shock therapy.

Doctor Rivers, the protagonist in the novel, has been in a psychiatric ward for a number of years now. He is much older than his patients, who are mostly young men brought to him from the war. Craiglockhart, located in England, is a place where soldiers victimized by World War One were sent when they couldn't function as soldiers anymore. Whether it be from shell- shock, or something else. Rivers talks to his patients. This is a very new technic used at this time. Rivers is unsure of his therapy and if it works. He deals with this inner conflict throughout the whole story. Rivers helps his patients deal with their in dilemmas, in hopes that they will understand why they feel the way they do, and how to control their emotions, and how to cope with their problems and experiences.

Doctor Rivers is a character of mercy. He is taking a standby trying to make this new therapy work. When he sees what Doctor Yealland does to his patients in order to "cure" them, Rivers is outraged and disturbed.

Doctor Yealland participates in something which is very accepted at the time, electric shock therapy. He even says to Rivers that he shouldn't feel sympathetic to the patients. I feel Yealland is a brute. How could you know feel remorse for inducing large amounts a agonizing pain on another human being? Yealland is doing something that I would never be able to do, he tortures his patients into being cure. I can't imagine that it worked that well, especially since he was using this therapy on men with shell shock. Yealland's form of therapy is also very impersonal. He even says to one of his patients, "You must speak, but I shall not listen to anything you have to say. I cannot imagine the hopelessness his patients must feel, knowing that they were fighting in war, and then brought to be tortured in a psychiatric facility.

Show More
Related

  • Dr. Grant's Essay: The Case Of Mr. G.

    483 Words  | 1 Pages

    Grant successfully managed to treat Mr. G she comes to the realization that a doctor should not judge a patient no matter how they may act, as each patient may have a reason for acting the way they do. Dr. Grant has managed to learn how to combine her own personal experience with her doctoral skills she had learned in medical schools. Dr Grant believes. “ …[A]fter twenty-eight years of schooling, my education continues, both inside and outside the classroom” ( 183). Mr. G was the key figure in changing Dr. Grants judgement. If Mr. G had not shed light onto why he was in the hospital and how he felt stripped of his freedom to Dr. Grant she probably would have just branded him as crazy, she probably would have done the same to similar patients. As Dr. Grant states, “ … I was proud of myself for having accomplished my task… I was proud of myself because I had decided not to prejudge Mr. G” (182). Mr. G exposing his true emotions to Dr. Grant was the reason that she learned that she should not judge unique patients but instead, she should try to communicate with them and better understand so she can better help

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Film Madness: A History

    1272 Words  | 3 Pages

    The film gives a historical overview of how the mentally ill have been treated throughout history and chronicles the advancements and missteps the medical community has made along the way. Whittaker recounts the history of psychiatric treatment in America until 1950, he then moves on to describe the use of antipsychotic drugs to treat schizophrenia. He critically summarizes that it is doctors, rather than the patients, who have always calculated the evaluation of the merits of medical treatment, as the “mad” continue to be dismissed as unreliable witnesses. When in fact it is the patient being treated, and their subjective experience, that should be foremost in the evaluation. The film backs up this analysis with interviews of people, living viable lives in the town of Geel, Belgium. I would recommend this film to anyone interested in the history of medicine and specifically to those examining mental illness. It provides a balanced recounting of historical approaches to mental illness, along with success stories of the people of Geel, Belgium. And although I had to look away during the viewing of a lobotomy procedure, I give credit to the power of the visual impact the footage

    Read More

  • Mental Illness in the 1950's

    704 Words  | 2 Pages

    As science has evolved, so have treatments for mental illnesses have over time. The medical model is described as the view that psychological disorders are medical diseases with a biological origin (King, 2010, pg. 413). Abnormal behavior that categorizes some disorders can be impacted by biological factors such as genes, psychological factors such as childhood experiences, and even sociocultural factors such as gender and race (King, 2010). Treatments such as psychosurgery (lobotomy) , drug therapy (pharmaceuticals), electroconclusive therapy, and psychoanalysis are used to treat a wide range of psychological disorders. Back then, the public’s negative views on mental illnesses also went as far to associate with the people who treated it; psychiatrists. “Nunnally (1961) found that the public evaluated professionals who treated mental disorders significantly more negatively than those who treat physical disorders,” (Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 2000, pg. 189). People back then didn’t see the point in “paying to be told that they were crazy”. However, in today’s society, it is now acceptable to seek help from psychiatric professionals; we are seeing more and more people seek mental health treatment. “In terms of facility-based records of utilization (Manderscheid and Henderson 1998), the data suggest that the rate of utilization of professional mental health services has at least doubled and maybe tripled, between the 1950’s and today,” (Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 2000, pg. 189). In the 1950’s, neuroleptic drugs like Thorazine were introduced to treat the symptoms of schizophrenia. These drugs block a neurotransmitter called dopamine from getting to the brain, which in turn reduce schizophrenic symptoms, however there are some side effects such as substantial twitching of the neck, arms, and legs, and even dysphoria or lack of pleasure. (King, 2010, pg.

    Read More

  • Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) is a Safe Treatment for Mental Disorders

    2002 Words  | 5 Pages

    The original use of electricity as a cure for “insanity” dates back to the beginning of the 16th century when electric fish were used to treat headaches. Electroconvulsive therapy on humans originates from research in the 1930’s into the effects of camphor-induced seizures in people with schizophrenia (Guttmacher, 1994). In 1938, two Italian researchers, Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, were the first to use an electric current to induce a seizure in a delusional, hallucinating, schizophrenic man. The man fully recovered after eleven treatments. This led to a rapid spread of the use of ECT as a way to induce therapeutic convulsions in the mentally ill. Lothar Kalinowsky, Renato Almansi, and Victor Gonda are further responsible in spreading ECT from Italy to North America (Endler, 1988). Although there is some confusion as to who exactly is credited for administering the first ECT in America, it is known that it occurred in the early 1940.

    Read More

  • The Moral Treatment and Its Succes

    1429 Words  | 3 Pages

    First adopted by Dr. Willis and systematized by Pinel and Tuke, the moral treatment became the dominant treatment on psychiatry from the late 18th century to the late 19th century. Due to its emphasis on the liberty of patients, the connection between doctors and patients, and the classification of patients, the moral treatment effectively used psychological method to cure mental diseases and achieved unprecede

    Read More

  • A History of Mental Care in America

    563 Words  | 2 Pages

    The early history of mental illness is bleak. The belief that anyone with a mental illness was possessed by a demon or the family was being given a spiritual was the reason behind the horrific treatment of those with mental illness. These individuals were placed into institutions that were unhygienic and typically were kept in dark, cave like rooms away from people in the outside world. The institutions were not only dark and gross; they also used inhumane forms of treatment on their patients. Kimberly Leupo, discusses some of the practices that were used, these included may types of electro shocks, submitting patients to ice bath, as well as many other horrific events (Leupo). Lobotomies, which are surgical procedures that cut and scrape different connections in the brain, were very common practice. They were thought to help cure mental illness, but often ended up with more damage than good.

    Read More

  • Medical Ethics: Patient Wishes vs Doctor Actions

    1276 Words  | 3 Pages

    A conflict between a doctor who wants to treat his patient a certain way, and a patient who wants to be treated by the doctor the way she wants. The doctor feels the that certain treatment that the patient wants is dangerous and warns the patient that he will pronounce the patient mentally unstable. This is exactly what happened in the case of Mrs. Jackson and Dr. Lowell. The conflict in this entire article is if weather the doctor can, or can not, accuse his patient mental instability to go about the treatment as he sees fit. Is this an invasion of the patient’s wants and desire for a certain way of treatment? or does the doctor have moral rights to do anything and everything even though it is against the patient’s wishes. What justifies as moral and immoral procedure for a doctor to treat his patient.

    Read More

  • Understanding Schizophrenia: A Hidden Mental Illness

    1755 Words  | 4 Pages

    Once science took place and changed people 's view of God, they realized that mental illness were not punishments, but this didn 't stop people from treating them in a hateful way. According to Kyziridis, people who weren 't considered normal, because of mental illness were treated as if they were caused by evil possession of the body, and the appropriate treatment was then exorcising these demons, through various ways, from harmless treatments to dangerous and barbaric (Kyziridis). Some example would be listening to music or dancing that will calm a patient down. Others would be through strapping them down and create pain. "The term 'schizophrenia ' was coined on April 24, 1908, when Professor Bleuler argued that dementia praecox was associated with neither dementia nor precociousness, and emphasized that splitting of psychic functioning is an essential feature of schizophrenia" (Ashok). He observed the patients and lived between them to see how they reacted to things. People with schizophrenia were constantly battling within the voices inside their heads, unfortunately treatments for it were

    Read More

  • Narrative Medicine: Doctor´s Empathy

    1437 Words  | 3 Pages

    While Charon whole-heartedly endorses Narrative Medicine, and narrative knowledge as the means to radical change of the practice of medicine, Garden takes a few steps back to objectively assess the issue. Garden goes all the way back to the eighteenth century to

    Read More

  • Effects Of Psychotherapy

    1530 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the last fifty years, the treatment for mental disorders has come with a stigma. This stigma drives the reason why nearly half of the population goes misdiagnosed when it comes to mental disorders, and why only 19% of those diagnosed receive accurate and positive treatment. Psychotherapy, the most beneficial, popular, and best option of psychotherapy provides less risk and greater mental improvement to patients than most conventional methods, most importantly those of psychopharmacology. Pharmaceuticals, an easy solution that only solves the symptoms without solving the root of the problem, have continuous and sought after due to their ease of use. Albeit an easy and quick solution, they involve many risks, including mistreatment, further

    Read More

  • The History of Treating Mental Illness

    1895 Words  | 4 Pages

    The treatment of the mentally ill started back in the far past. In 400 BC, Hippocrates, who was a Greek physician, treated mental illness as diseases of disturbed physiology, and not displeasure of the Gods or demonic possession ("Timeline: Treatments for," ). Greek medical writers found treatments such as quiet, occupation, and the use of a drug called purgative hellebore ("Timeline: Treatments for,”). During these times, family members took care of the mentally ill ("Timeline: Treatments for,”). In the middle Ages, the Europeans let the mentally ill have their freedom, as long as they were not dangerous ("Timeline: Treatments for,”). The mentally ill were also seen as witches who were possessed by demons ("Timeline: Treatments for,”). In 1407, the first mental illness establishment was made in Valencia, Spain ("Timeline: Treatments for,”).

    Read More

  • The Use of Force

    1585 Words  | 4 Pages

    As the story begins, the unnamed doctor is introduced as one who appears to be strictly professional. “Aas often, in such cases, they weren’t telling me more than they had to, it was up to me to tell them; that’s why they were spending three dollars on me.” (par. 3) The doctor leaves the first impression that he is one that keeps his attention about the job and nothing out of the ordinary besides stating his impressions on the mother, father and the patient, Mathilda. Though he does manage to note that Mathilda has a fever. The doctor takes what he considers a “trial shot” and “point of departure” by inquiring what he suspects is a sore throat (par. 6). This point in the story, nothing remains out of the ordinary or questionable about the doctor’s methods, until the story further develops.

    Read More

  • Psychodynamic Therapy Essay

    1588 Words  | 4 Pages

    Psychodynamic psychotherapy was first started by Freud who worked to make this therapy better from 1885 when he began until he passed away in 1939. When Freud first began his first approach to psychoanalytic theory was primarily biological. As years past Freud changed his thoughts and views and it eventually evolved into the therapy it is today. (Borstein,2016)

    Read More

  • Temptation In Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

    228 Words  | 1 Pages

    Jekyll is a successful doctor, who is looked upon with great dignity, “a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness”( Ch: 3 Par: 1). Hidden behind his exterior lies a monster inside him who is dying to get out. Months of isolation pass and the ones nearest him,

    Read More

  • Essay On Factitious Disorder

    737 Words  | 2 Pages

    Psychiatric help has been the main treatment offered, but sometimes when the level of the disorder has been harmful to the patient or others, they were hospitalized forcefully.

    Read More

More about The Ethics of Electric Shock Therapy in "Regeneration"

Open Document