Maybe it's just me but I think I'd actually prefer suicide over the "possible" (but quite common) mental handicap that ECT will cause. And please note that psy

Maybe it's just me but I think I'd actually prefer suicide over the "possible" (but quite common) mental handicap that ECT will cause. And please note that psychiatrists lie. Technically it may be the truth what they say, but it is a disgusting lie through deception. Yes it is quite rare for a single ECT treatment to cause permanent memory loss or "severe" loss of function. What they "forget" to tell you is that an ECT regimen is not one treatment, but 7 to 20 individual sessions. Mathematically you can say that (1-(1-p)^20) is a hell of a lot larger than p. Intuitively you can say that it only works BECAUSE it does damage. So without at least some loss of function there is no benefit to it at all). It is also not so rare for the treatment to be abandoned, by the way, because the particular loss of function has medical consequences. They also say it doesn't hurt, except that is patently false. When you have a medical operation doctors will use 3 sedatives, not just one. They use something akin to GHB that prevents the formation of memories, a muscle relaxant (prevents you from moving) and something to actually sedate (depress neural activity). For ECT they use a muscle relaxant and GHB. So ECT doesn't hurt in the sense that afterwards you don't remember. They would use a sedative, except with those it doesn't work. The working principle of ECT seems to be extreme pain and trauma, and they merely prevent you from remembering that. They explicitly don't prevent extreme pain. We know it's extreme because it used to be done without any sedation at all, so there's no shortage of patient testimonies on the subject. Psychiatrists still want to use it because it is effectively the only medical treatment that can result in permanent change in behaviour. Nearly everything else (or let's say everything legal/moral) only results in change while the treatment continues, like antidepressants. If the treatment is stopped (voluntarily or not, say because of money issues) all effects stop in a matter of hours to weeks. And yes, I think it should be outlawed. Also the modern forms. That psychiatry has no answers for problems is not new.