China bans electro-shock for treating Internet addicts, far too late to help McMurphy
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted July 14th 2009 9:38PM
posted July 14th 2009 9:38PM
It's been a while since the specter of IA has reared it's ugly head 'round here (or maybe we've just learned to accept it) but now it looks like it's back in the news. According to Reuters, the Chinese Ministry of Health has banned electro-shock therapy for the treatment of Internet Addiction after it came to light that a doctor named Yang Yongxin (also known as "Uncle Yang") has wired up as many as 3,000 teenagers in his Internet Addiction Treatment Center at Linyi Mental Hospital. The treatment included the aforementioned electro-shocks as well as psychotropic drugs, at a cost of 5,500 yuan ($805) a month -- cruel and unnecessary, sure, but a small price to pay to get your teenager off of MySpace.
外焦里嫩
and tastes like chicken, smells like teen spirit.
"Ah, Juicy Fruit."
"Well you sly, son of a bitch, Chief!!"
You mean teens still use myspace? I think facebook would be a slightly less antiquated reference.
I interned under an anesthesiologist and I witnessed many, many electroconvlusive therapy sessions.
It's funny that people above are bashing others for not knowing about ECT outside movies and books when they clearly know nothing about it themselves. ECT is completely humane, the patient is sedated and anesthetized during the procedure, the only convulsing that occurs is flexing of the foot which is purposefully allowed to monitor the physical effect. ECT has no more to do with creating a "pavlovian response" to heal deeply pathological behaviors (which is utterly impossible, btw) than orthopedic surgery psychologically conditions a patient to stop having joint pain. Additionally, ECT is only used in extreme cases where other medication has failed, typically reserved to severe depression, bipolar disorder, and schizoaffective disorder.
While it is true that some memory loss can be a side effect, having seen the way this bizarrely effective therapy truly helps people lead fairly normal lives which would be utterly impossible otherwise, this is an acceptable side effect, especially when considering the inevitable side effects of alternative treatments.
The fact that this doctor used ECT on teenage internet addicts, however, in addition to psychotropic drugs is ridiculous. Addiction is not treatable by ECT as far as I know, and even if it were, there is no reason to treat it with anything other than therapy and possibly some (non-psychoactive) medication in extreme cases. Besides, who the hell is trusting a doctor who's nicknamed "Uncle?" That sounds like something George Orwell would have been proud to make up.
"Peculiar??!!!"
I wonder if China still "treat" gay with electro-shock? Or they also bans it now.
I do believe the treatments mentioned here are entirely VOLUNTARY, much like the tap dance lessons you attend each week. So the bashing of China here makes little sense. Plus, isn't it the Chinese gov't that's banning this practice? I know it's a fashionable thing to rip on China, but please at least try to make valid arguments next time.
I can bash China all I want, in about a week more people are going to have died in the Urumqi ethnic conflict than the Iraq and Afgan wars. Can you imagine in a situation in the US where all the Mormans got together in decided to kill all the people in Utah who were not Morman? Because these are the types of things that happen in China.
That depends on what VOLUNTARY means. I doubt the teenagers were the ones volunteering...
Who knows what these parents were actually being told before sending their kids to these treatments. I doubt there was a checklist that looked like this
- Electro Shock Treatment, check
- Psychotropic Drugs, check
- Memory Loss, check
A question to the scientologists in the comments on this article:
Have they made one of those tiny projects out of commenting here? Did they(CCHR) - as with the print article-comments- propose to you what/how much you should comment on this article? Is there an email you could forward to me?
LOL. I for one leave ECT(or in Sciento-Slang EST) to the experts with experience to judge about it's effectiveness. If chinese doctors say they don't need it, I'm ok with it. If it's a political (a.k.a. we dont shock people but make their families pay the bullet we shoot them with) then prolly this decision might have the saddening side effect of some poor souls being incarcerated for the rest of their lives because their therapy is forbidden by law.
CCHR is 100%-Scientology. Don't let yourself be fooled. They make projects out of comment-threads like this. For print-articles it's documented on wikileaks. (leaked emails)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.
Fantastic movie, however lobotomy haunted my dreams and is still one of my worst nightmares. I dont really mind losing a hand or a leg but losing the ability to speak or to control your thoughts, to lose yourself and still be alive, is horrible. I'd rather have a bullet plunging through my gray mass.
ect is not lobotomy. read up.
I see that internet addiction is one of the most popular addictions (at least on that website), as well as many other computer related things... I wonder what their exact treatment includes ...
Woops, forgot to include the link: http://www.beatingaddiction.com/addictions/view.php/10064/Internet