Linda Andre

Linda Andre is an American psychiatric survivor activist and writer, living in New York City, who is the director of the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry (CTIP), an organization founded by Marilyn Rice in 1984 to encourage the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) machines.[1][2][3]

Anti-ECT activism

Since receiving ECT in the early 1980s at age 25, Andre has been writing and doing research to help other ECT survivors cope with their cognitive and memory losses, and inform the general public about the risks of ECT. Linda has been interviewed by 20/20, The Atlantic, the New York Times[4] and the Washington Post.

Interviewed by the Los Angeles Times in 2003, Linda commented on a British study that found that when patients helped design or conduct ECT surveys, only one third of the respondents claimed to find ECT helpful, but when doctors designed and conducted the surveys, three-fourths claimed to find ECT beneficial. "This is what happens when you ask patients what they think," said patient turned prominent ECT critic Linda Andre,..."you get a completely different story from the one psychiatrists are telling."[5] She and her friends have formed the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry which has now over 500 former electric shock patients. [6]

In 2009 her book Doctors of Deception: What they don't want you to know about shock treatment was published. Reviewing this work, James Woods, of the University of Edinburgh and writing in the journal the Social History of Medicine commented:

[O]ver the course of its 17 often meticulously researched chapters, Andre provides a useful contrast to the claims made in Edward Shorter and David Healy's recent paean to ECT and the men who were instrumental in its development (Edward Shorter and David Healy, Shock Therapy, 2007), and offers a potentially devastating critique of both ECT and the modern American psychiatric profession.

— Social History of Medicine, 2010, in James Woods

Published works
  • Andre, Linda (2001). "Memory loss: from polarization to reconciliation". Journal of ECT. 17 (3): 228–29. doi:10.1097/00124509-200109000-00022. PMID 11528324.
  • Andre, Linda (2005). "ECT then and now". Psychiatric Services. 56 (4): 490–91. doi:10.1176/appi.ps.56.4.490-a. PMID 15812104. Archived from the original on 2005-04-25.
  • Andre, Linda (2009). Doctors of Deception: What They Don't Want You to Know About Shock Treatment. New York. ISBN 9780813546520.

See also

References
  1. "Testimony of Linda Andre, Director of Committee for Truth in Psychiatry". HealthyPlace. 2001-05-18. Retrieved 2016-05-12.
  2. Kneeland, Timothy W.; Warren, Carol A. B. (2002). Pushbutton Psychiatry: A History of Electroshock in America. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780275968151.
  3. Wood, J. (15 February 2010). "Linda Andre, Doctors of Deception: What They Don't Want You to Know About Shock Treatment". Social History of Medicine. 23 (1): 218–219. doi:10.1093/shm/hkp135.
  4. Foderaro, Lisa W. (1993-07-19). "With Reforms in Treatment, Shock Therapy Loses Shock". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-05-12.
  5. Carey, Benedict (2003-11-17). "Shock therapy and the brain". Los Angeles Times. ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved 2016-05-12.
  6. About the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry (CTIP)
  • Madness Radio, May 11, 2009, 'Electroshock Deceptions Linda Andre'
  • Review of Doctors of deception by Peter Lehmann in Advocacy Update – The latest in activism and community news from ENUSP, Greek edition, Vol. 1 (2010), No. 1, pp. 19-20
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