Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Electroshock: Healing Mental Illness by Max Fink ISBN: 0-19-515804-0 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: November, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.62 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A very useful publication for patients and families
Comment: Max Fink's "Electroshock: Restoring the Mind", despite its provocative title, is a very useful, easily absorbed, informative,and lucidly written book presenting a master clinician's perspective on this controversial -yet indispensable- treatment for severe mental illness. Professor Fink explains the changes that have made this once feared treatment safe and painless with only minor and reversible side effects and guides the reader with admirable clarity through technical explanations, indications and side effects, easily understood descriptions of the mental conditions this treatment is particularly helpful in,intriguing insights about the way ECT works, and interesting speculations about the future. These are all very helpful to demystify the treatment, particularly for patients who are offered the treatment and their relatives,present an introductory text for psychology and psychiatry students, and alleviate fears associated with rumors and prejudice for the general public. This is an important and timely contribution in an era when the use of ECT is actually on the rise and its application is finally based on solid scientific research. The book is also significant for two additional reasons. One is the history of ECT it provides which gives a perspective in time and helps understand the social and scientific contexts in which this treatment was born, used, abused, and denigrated. The second is the wealth of invaluable stories of the many patients that Dr Fink has cared for over the decades, who have had their illness restored by ECT when nothing else was working, and who in turn, through the exposition of their experience, are the the ones who truly restore its reputation
Rating: 5
Summary: A must-read book for families of new patients
Comment: This book fulfills a very important function: written by a foremost medical expert on ECT, it provides the lay reader with a brief, clear, up-to-date summary of this much maligned yet highly effective treatment. To this reader, the most valuable (and original) contribution of this book is its emphasis on continuation ECT. Fink gives repeated examples of individuals given ECT who responded, as the families put it "miraculously." But then, when the symptoms returned months or even years later, ECT was not used again. It was assumed to have "failed" because its effects were not permanent. But no one assumes that drugs have failed if they are taken and symptoms return when the patient stops taking them. Patients who have responded well to ECT have an excellent chance of responding again: many patients will do best if they are given ECT on a continuation basis but spaced far more broadly than at the initial crisis. There are two other particularly important contributions of this book. One is the discussion of the large variety of mental illnesses (not just depression) that respond well to ECT. The other is the encouragement it gives families to use ECT early in schizophrenia (where it is not rarely used at all, early or late). ECT used early in acute onset schizophrenia can not infrequently cut off the disease at the start, saving patients and their families a lifetime of torment.
Rating: 5
Summary: A book for individuals with severe depression
Comment: This book is targeted towards those with severe forms of mental illness, particularly severe mood disorders. Most people, including many Medical Doctors and many talk therapist "mental health" professionals do not adequately understand severe depression and its related conditions. However Max Fink clearly does understand severe depression and not in a psychobabble fashion either. Fink understands the underlying Neurological processes that occur in severe depression and he explains how an artificially induced ECT grand mal seizure is the best way to destroy severe depression. And this is one of the many reasons why you should read this book if you have a severe mood disorder of ANY type. Whether you have unipolar major depression, bipolar manic depression or "psychotic" depression...you should read this book.
Why should you read this book? One of the main reasons is that its very difficult to find credible sources of information about modern ECT. Most of the websites on the internet concerned with ECT are emotionally ANTI-ECT and run by biased individuals who do not understand severe mental illness and do not understand ECT. Max Fink's book sets the record straight and gives you the hard cold facts about modern ECT. He explains it in adequate detail, but without getting so technical you fall asleep.
Also, some of the books written about ECT in the past were written by individuals who had ECT in the forties, fifties and sixties, before oxygenation was instituted during ECT and when it was routinely forced upon patients and used for "behavioral control" rather than using it to treat severe mental illness. Therefore, Fink's book does justice to explaining how the MODERN form of ECT is used in the MODERN era, not in 1952 in some dark, dank state run mental institution.
Fink explains many of the fundamental technical differences between "old style" ECT used forty or more years ago and the modern ECT used today. One of these fundamental differences is the use of oxygenation during ECT. In the original forms of ECT, patients were not oxygenated and during the seizure, patients tended to hold their breath for several minutes at a time and their faces would turn blue. This accounted for many of the "ECT induced brain damage" cases which so tainted the original form of ECT. Fink explains in detail, that in the modern form of ECT, you are fully oxygenated, breathing 100% pure oxygen just like pilots breathe at high altitude when flying high tech figher jets. This artificial oxygenation prevents the excessive memory loss and prevents brain damage from occurring.
Fink also does a good job at explaining what happened to psychiatry in the late forties and fifties, when it was pretty much taken over by the Freudian psychoanalysts. Who believed severe mental illness was not a brain based Neurological condition, but a problem which occurred due to deep seated, mysterious "psychological" issues which could only be resolved by endless talk therapy. Many many patients were ruined as a result of this adherence to the belief severe mental illness was not a physical, brain based illness.
Fink also does a good job of explaining how the "anti-psychiatry" movement got started. The "anti-psychiatry" movement is behind most of whatever lobbying that goes on to ban ECT.
Another thing I liked about Fink's book is that he points out that many psychotic patients could benefit from ECT but arent getting it. And many of them could possibly avoid the movement disorder side effect risks from anti-psychotic drugs. I think this is a particularly important point to make when psychiatrists are increasingly prescribing atypical anti-psychotics for persons with depression and anxiety and do not have psychosis. Maybe many of these individuals would benefit more from ECT and not risk the "Extra Pyramidal Syndrome" (pseudu-parkinsons disease) side effects of even low dose atypical anti-psychotic drugs?
ECT has many many benefits over anti-psychotic drugs and Fink points this out. ECT does not induce the debilitating movement disorders that ALL anti-psychotic drugs can induce, such as Extra Pyramidal Syndrome (mild parkinsons), the dreaded Tardive Dyskinisia, Neuromuscular Malignant Syndrome, dystonia and other nasty movement disorder problems you dont want to ever get. ECT causes none of this, in fact ECT is the ONLY treatment in psychiatry which has both anti-psychotic and anti-parkinsons effects rolled into one. Fink points this out in his book.
Also, ECT does not raise blood sugar levels and induce diabetes as many of the newer atypical anti-psychotics tend to do. Many of the newer atypical anti-psychotics are being implicated in cases of inducement of diabetes, Zyprexa is one of these. ECT carries none of these elevation of blood sugar risks.
In fact, the only real side effect of modern ECT is memory loss.
I for one believe ECT deserves a resurgence in the treatment of severe mood disorders and if you read Max Fink's book, you will no longer be afraid of ECT. Finally, it should be noted that ECT is the single best treatment for severe mood disorders that exists and many times it is the ONLY thing which will work.
Thank God we have ECT, for living with an untreated severe clinical depression is the worst hell you can possibly imagine. If you or a loved one has a severe mood disorder and are considering ECT, I would highly recommend this book
 |
Title: Handbook of Ect by Charles H. Kellner, John T. Pritchett, Mark D., Md Beale, C. Edward, Md Coffey ISBN: 088048683X Publisher: Amer Psychiatric Pr Pub. Date: 15 January, 1997 List Price(USD): $36.50 |
 |
Title: Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface by Martha Manning ISBN: 006251184X Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 15 December, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: Electroconvulsive Therapy by Richard Abrams ISBN: 0195148207 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: 15 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $66.50 |
 |
Title: Holiday of Darkness: A Psychologist's Personal Journey Out of His Depression by Norman Endler ISBN: 0921332297 Publisher: Wall & Emerson Pub. Date: September, 1990 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
 |
Title: Darkness Visible : A Memoir of Madness by William Styron ISBN: 0679736395 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 08 January, 1992 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
