Do you really want to treat children this way?

I came across a quite horrific piece of reporting today when I discovered that Electro Convulsive Therapy is still being used and worse it is being used on children as young as 4 years old.

This brutal treatment has been in place since the 1930s and although it has been refined a little over the decades (with sedation to prevent the pain) it still seems analogous sticking a long needle into the brain, stirring it around and hoping for the best.

It is used by psychiatrists as a last resort when all other drug and talk based therapies have been exhausted, at least that's what I thought. This blog post seems to indicate that far from being a last resort it is being used routinely in Australia on young children.

ECT causes permanent brain damage, it destroys memory and cognition skills, are they really saying that this is the best way of dealing with a child?

It may be useful; to remember that doctors are fallible too and it's not that long ago they would recommend certain brands of cigarettes as being 'good for the chest'. In other words they get things wrong.

I struggle to believe that drugs or ECT are the only treatment options open to these children; what is their diet like, what is their family life like who is caring for them in the fullest sense of the word?

There really has to be a much better way than this.