I’d never shared my story in services. Yesterday I was ready, healing, surrounded by loved ones, @PPR_Org #NewScript activists & @ReadReadj talking about the evidence re safety & efficacy of #ECT. View youtu.be/MY5CTuMbW2w On #IWD ‘Medicalisation of distress = #VAWG!!

The latest (8th) paper from our international survey. Full. Free. Great to give a voice to so many previously unheard people. “An international survey of the relatives and friends of electroconvulsive therapy recipients” - Harrop et al bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wil…

Coverage of the latest paper from our ECT survey medicalxpress.com/news/2026-…

Family is the basic unit of society. But what happens when a promised "safe and effective" medical procedure acts like a hardrive wipe of all experiences? Relationships rooted in shared experiences are destroyed. 275 family members shared their experiences with #ECT and how it impacted their loved ones. This peer-reviewed article (published today) in Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. My dad, a gentle, soft-spoken, hero-of-a-man, had never previously been candid with me about his thoughts witnessing my ECT experience. When I asked him if he'd be willing to share a statement for the media about the article giving family members a voice, he sent me the following: “The immediate effects of my daughter’s ECT were startling: memory loss. We are, after all, the sum of our memories. She knew I was her father, but she did not remember anything about our relationship. I was told this would be short-term. They lied. Even worse was the long-term effect on her physical health. It was a prescribed massive electrical injury, again, and again, and again. Typical long-term results of multiple electrical injuries include neurological damage, depression, anxiety, PTSD, migraines, hearing loss, reduced cognitive abilities, and/or attention difficulties, along with chronic pain. She got most of those, plus some extra.” I wish our ECT experience was an anomaly. I wish that raw pain had been isolated to a single family to protect the others. Sadly, these survey results indicate more families were harmed in ways far worse than I was. This is why the @FDA must enforce their 2018 ruling adulterating ECT devices and @CMSGov must cut off funding until doctors have training in how to chose an electrical dose that can reliably replicate research findings on their individual patient with a unique head size and shape. The last survey response highlighted in the article is a devastating example of what can happen when a doctor isn't trained in how to choose a correct dose, the clinic isn't prepared for manufacturer identified treatment consequences, and the hospital's lawyers bury it. My dad's heartbreaking explanation of his witnessing my ECT experience could have been so much worse in this medically sanctioned Russian Roulette. #AuditECT @Chris_E_Harrop @LisaTMSA @ReadReadj @BasedMikeLee @MakeAmericaHA bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wil…

An article by Sue Cunliffe, a co-author of our ECT survey. I was a successful doctor, then ECT blew my brain to bits telegraph.co.uk/health-fitne…

Honoured to be invited to provide a 4-hour seminar in the “Master Clinician” series for the Psychiatry Department of Stanford University on March 20. Online. On Psychosis….. “Beyond Diagnosis”

tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.… Thanks to Prof Baldinger-Melich for graciously allowing us a right of reply to her editorial in Int. J. Psychiatry in Clinical Practice. @PsychRecovery @MITUKteam @lifeafterect @christophlane @JDaviesPhD @RichardBentall @UEL_News @UELPsychLondon

Question for all: Are critiques of ECT scaremongering or contributions to informed consent? #AuditECT ⁦⁦@MichelleFunk3⁩ ⁦@Mad_In_America⁩ ⁦@ReadReadj⁩ tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.…

What 776 ECT Recipients Want You to Know madintheuk.com/2026/02/what-… via @MITUKTeam Documenting the devastation caused by ECT. Written by an ECT survivor.

What 776 Electroconvulsive Therapy Recipients Want You to Know -@Psychrecovery via @Mad_In_America madinamerica.com/2026/02/wha… @DrJosefWD @MindFreedom @PsychRights @NAMIAdvocacy @LauraDelano @Altostrata @VRworkforce

Open questions of ECT patients designed by patients and researchers (us) vs closed questions of the psychiatrists giving the ECT, designed by psychiatrists. Free article in full. The self-reported positive and negative effects of electroconvulsive t... sciencedirect.com/science/ar…

Uncovering the True Impact of Electroconvulsive Therapy Through Open-Ended Questions @UEL_News @UELPsychLondon @PsychRecovery @Mad_In_America @MITUKteam @RichardBentall @CEP_UK @markhoro @joannamoncrieff @dranneguy scienmag.com/uncovering-the-…

Childhood Trauma and Recent Stressors Rarely Addressed; ECT Given Instead By John Read madintheuk.com/2025/12/child… #MentalHealth #TraumaInformedCare #ECT #Psychiatry #MedicalEthics #MentalHealthResearch #HumanRights #EndMedicalModel #SocialDeterminantsOfHealth

New date Jan 20th: An Audience with an Ally – Professor John Read @UEL_News @joannamoncrieff @DrJosefWD @PsychRecovery @LisaTMSA @JDaviesPhD @markhoro @TuominenPiia @PTMFramework @DrJessTaylor madintheuk.com/2025/10/oct-7… via @MITUKTeam

‘Our findings are not unique … Multiple previous studies have found that the majority of users of mental health services, internationally, are neither asked about adverse or traumatic events nor have them adequately addressed if they do disclose them’👇🏼Seizures to heal abuse🤷🏼‍♀️

Huge international coverage of our survey . usnews.com/news/health-news/…

"The results of our #ECT patient survey highlight the absence of routine identification and treatment of the real causes of our [“psychiatric”] symptoms. These results demonstrate I am far from the only person prematurely prescribed #ECT without finding out what was really going on and what I really needed."-@PsychRecovery “Recent stressors also went largely unrecognized. Some 81% of Electroconvulsive Therapy recipients reported at least one significant stressor in the six months before treatment, most commonly loneliness or coercive/emotional abuse. 67% believed these stressors played a role in their difficulties, but only 34% were asked about them, and just 21% felt they had been addressed.” #AuditECT @Mad_In_America @DisabilityRiCo @UNHumanRights @DisabilityCA @HHSGov

ECT Patients Not Asked About Causes of Their Problems | Psychology Today psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/…

Forty-three percent of children in Scotland are now identified as having some sort of additional learning need – the Scottish term for what is called special educational needs (SEN) in England. If 43% of children have needs which are not met in the mainstream education system, I think it’s time to think about whether that mainstream system is fit for purpose. We’ve created a system that does not consider the developmental needs of children, and which has an increasingly rigid focus on academics from an early age. We expect young children to sit when their bodies want to move, we expect them to focus on reading and writing when they are primed to learn through exploration and play. We send our teens to huge impersonal schools, where they move through the day without any connection with an adult who knows anything about them. We focus on test results at all costs, telling our children that if they don’t do well, a bleak future is all they can expect. Then when our children show us that this doesn’t work for them, we say that the problem is them. We send them for assessments and get reports written on how they aren’t performing as we expect. We tell them that they are ‘badly behaved’ or ‘disruptive’. We identify them as ‘having ALN’ or ‘having SEND’. We behave as if the problem isn’t the system we’ve created, it’s the children who don’t fit it. Unsurprisingly, the harder we look, the more children we identify who don’t fit the system. The more rigid the system becomes, the more children there will be who can't meet expectations. Children need flexibility, and our system doesn't provide it for them. At what point will we realise that the problem isn’t our children, it’s that the system wasn’t built with their needs in mind?

"Data paints a picture of what's happening in society and Northern Ireland doesn't have that picture." Thanks to @mlchealth & @BBCNewsNI for speaking to us and covering this important story, watch @bbcnewsline at 6:30 this evening to find out more! bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gk…