1. ELECTRO CONVULSIVE THERAPY: "NEW" TREATMENT OF THE 1980s.
- Author
-
Warren, Carol A. B.
- Subjects
ELECTROCONVULSIVE therapy ,ELECTROTHERAPEUTICS ,PSYCHIATRY ,MENTAL health services ,SOCIAL conflict - Abstract
The article reports on electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Much has been written during the last decade on the medicalization of deviance and social control. Behaviors which were once either not problematic, or seen as individual vices, have come to be seen as manifestations of medical disorders over the last century. Mental illness has long been seen as an appropriate arena for medical intervention. This paper reports on the increase in the use of ECT in California over the past six years, and suggests some tentative sociological explanations for the increase. There is considerable clinical controversy concerning the use of ECT in the treatment of psychiatric disorders, with some physicians opposed to its use under any circumstances. Utilization rates vary by state, ranging from under 10 percent of psychiatrists to over 20 percent using ECT in their practices. Since almost all ECT is administered on an inpatient basis, the increase in ECT can usefully be measured against inpatient population changes. The inpatient population of California state and county mental hospitals has shown a steady and linear decline between 1972 and 1980, from 11,042 to 6,508. Sociological explanations for the rising contemporary utilization of ECT, then, may properly begin, but not end, with the issue of privatization of psychiatric care. The rise in popularity of biomedical models of mental disorder, the patterns and sources of reimbursement, and the relationship of these reimbursement sources to the socio-demographic characteristics of patients are all significant features in the development of an explanatory theory.
- Published
- 1986