SHOCK THERAPY: A HISTORY OF ELECTROCONVULSIVE TREATMENT IN MENTAL ILLNESS

SHOCK THERAPY: A HISTORY OF ELECTROCONVULSIVE TREATMENT IN MENTAL ILLNESS By Edward Shorter and David Healy New Brunswick (NJ): Rutgers University Press, 2012 382 pp., $32.50

Edward Shorter, a medical historian, and David Healy, a professor of psychiatry, review the contentious history of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) with an underlying frustration. Shock Therapy, now out in paperback, asks:Why isn't a therapy that has relieved the suffering of countless mentally ill patients-more reliably and safely, they argue, than pharmaceuticals- used more often than...