Keimstock was a semi-annual event held in March in Boron, California. Started in 1999 by the Keim brothers as a small sleepover between High School boys, the event would later evolve into a large Woodstock-like festival, complete with live bands, dance, and sports.
1999 - The First Year
Keimstock was the idea of a group of friends at Boron Jr./Sr. High School. The name came from wanting to have something that would intrigue people enough to make them want to attend. Other possible names included Keimapalooza, but that was too close to Mitch-a-palooza from Old School, and The Keimith Fair, which to the guys seemed to invoke the wrong type of image. With there only being one more large festival that they knew of, Woodstock, it was they only choice. Once the name was decided upon the only thing left to do was pick a time. October 1999 was the chosen time to be the first year of the event. With the promotion of Keimstock low with little to no buildup the turnout was expectedly low, with only 8th grade boys attending. The activities that took place were as one would expect 8th graders to participate in, listening to Britney Spears, playing basketball, and wrestling.
2000-2001 - The Lost Years
Since the first ever Keimstock was just a group of 8th grade boys is was seen as a failure at the time. The guys were determined to lose the "kiddie" image of the event, the Keim brothers, with the help of their comrades, launched an aggressive ad campaign. The best route of garnering the desired attention was, in their mind, to go with a shock and awe approach in the promotion. They decided it would be best to go with the offensive slogan "The Keims Are About to Make You Their Bitch, Watch Out Coming In October 2000". This ad campaign did not get the attention they wanted, and in fact, infuriated the small conservative community causing a boycott to be placed on the event eventually causing the cancellation of it. The next two years were spent trying to reinvent themselves so that one day Keimstock would be great.
2002 - The Small Get Together
In 2002 Keimstock was moved to March. With moral still low because of the boycott it was decided that the Keimstock this year should be more low key and only consist of a few friends and from this small seed hopefully Keimstock would grow over the years to be huge. Besides trying a different promotional approach they decided it would be better to move Keimstock to the second week of March due to the weather and the opportunity to have more time to plan the event. The events of that night will never be forgotten. The party became split over the issue of toilet papering other people's houses. Half the party wanted to go and make trouble for innocent people, while the other half of the party thought that was a ridiculous thing to do. So the half that stayed back and called the homes that were being targeted in order to warn the occupants of the impending act of vandalism that was soon to occur. This led the, would be vandals, to be chased around town by angry mothers. Besides the toilet papering incident other memorable moments included "The Sonet-Smokey Rumpus Behind the Couch", "The Peeping Toms", and "Bear's Burka". These events and others led to the revival of Keimstock.
2003 - The Big Return
After the long hiatus Keimstock was officially back after the success of the previous year. It was decided that Keimstock would keep its March date. The Keim's and other planners decided that they would go with an underground ad approach to build a small hype that spread word to the masses. The ad slogan for the year was simply "Beware of the Ides March", since that year it happened to fall on the 15th of March. As the planning crew grew older the events that took place at Keimstock became more sophisticated. The planning crew decided that in order to live up to the hype they would need to do more than wrestle with one another, listen to Britney Spears' cds. They came up with the idea to make Keimstock more exclusive in order to make more people want to be there by setting a limit on the number of people allowed through the doors. Due to the events of the previous year it was decided that Sonet should be banned for the sake of everyone else. Along with making Keimstock more exclusive it was also decided that to make the event grow there would to have to be more events happening outside, what was decided was there needed to be music and sports. Though the idea was good in the organizer's minds, mother nature decided that it was not and decided it was a good day to rain, forcing everything back inside. While inside some of the most memorable events of the Keimstock happened, including "Twister - Crtl Z, Hit Undo", "Garry Potter in Give the Paddle", and "Meatballs in the Morning... Eww". The turn out was higher then expected despite the rain and it would pave the road for the last hurrah of Keimstock.
2004 - End With A Bang
After finally finding success with Keimstock the hype of next years Keimstock began immediately. Though the pressure was on to produce an even better Keimstock the planning crew did not falter. Using new talents that they had a learned in the year they were able to add to the anticipation with a classic Battle of the Bands between local bands, The Electric Socks and Satan's Poohole, along with having a local DJ player, and the innovative idea to include the use of Keimstock lights. For the Keimstock of 2004 there was no need to promotion it as it was talked about all year. The idea was that it would be a party for everyone, well not everyone per se, but everyone who was not on the Black List. Again keeping with the idea that if some people were excluded more people would want to come to see what was going one the Black List increased from just Sonet to G.W Bush, Cheney, Saddam, Osama, Steve Guttenberg, and Paul Rubens to name a few. The night of Keimstock 2004 saw a record number of people show up and even the police, which was a shocking thing to happen in the town, after the police declined in joining the party it preceded as if nothing happened. Though some say that it was not as good as the 2003 Keimstock it was certainly larger and ended with a bang.
After Keimstock
The Keim's graduated from high school in 2004 and they decided that it would not be a good idea to keep hosting a high school party once they were graduated. When news that 2004 would be the last Keimstock immediately there were those that wanted to carry on the legacy, in the end the legacy of Keimstock was given away to the local pizza boy who had a delivered a pizza to the Keim residence from across the street.
1999 - The First Year
Keimstock was the idea of a group of friends at Boron Jr./Sr. High School. The name came from wanting to have something that would intrigue people enough to make them want to attend. Other possible names included Keimapalooza, but that was too close to Mitch-a-palooza from Old School, and The Keimith Fair, which to the guys seemed to invoke the wrong type of image. With there only being one more large festival that they knew of, Woodstock, it was they only choice. Once the name was decided upon the only thing left to do was pick a time. October 1999 was the chosen time to be the first year of the event. With the promotion of Keimstock low with little to no buildup the turnout was expectedly low, with only 8th grade boys attending. The activities that took place were as one would expect 8th graders to participate in, listening to Britney Spears, playing basketball, and wrestling.
2000-2001 - The Lost Years
Since the first ever Keimstock was just a group of 8th grade boys is was seen as a failure at the time. The guys were determined to lose the "kiddie" image of the event, the Keim brothers, with the help of their comrades, launched an aggressive ad campaign. The best route of garnering the desired attention was, in their mind, to go with a shock and awe approach in the promotion. They decided it would be best to go with the offensive slogan "The Keims Are About to Make You Their Bitch, Watch Out Coming In October 2000". This ad campaign did not get the attention they wanted, and in fact, infuriated the small conservative community causing a boycott to be placed on the event eventually causing the cancellation of it. The next two years were spent trying to reinvent themselves so that one day Keimstock would be great.
2002 - The Small Get Together
In 2002 Keimstock was moved to March. With moral still low because of the boycott it was decided that the Keimstock this year should be more low key and only consist of a few friends and from this small seed hopefully Keimstock would grow over the years to be huge. Besides trying a different promotional approach they decided it would be better to move Keimstock to the second week of March due to the weather and the opportunity to have more time to plan the event. The events of that night will never be forgotten. The party became split over the issue of toilet papering other people's houses. Half the party wanted to go and make trouble for innocent people, while the other half of the party thought that was a ridiculous thing to do. So the half that stayed back and called the homes that were being targeted in order to warn the occupants of the impending act of vandalism that was soon to occur. This led the, would be vandals, to be chased around town by angry mothers. Besides the toilet papering incident other memorable moments included "The Sonet-Smokey Rumpus Behind the Couch", "The Peeping Toms", and "Bear's Burka". These events and others led to the revival of Keimstock.
2003 - The Big Return
After the long hiatus Keimstock was officially back after the success of the previous year. It was decided that Keimstock would keep its March date. The Keim's and other planners decided that they would go with an underground ad approach to build a small hype that spread word to the masses. The ad slogan for the year was simply "Beware of the Ides March", since that year it happened to fall on the 15th of March. As the planning crew grew older the events that took place at Keimstock became more sophisticated. The planning crew decided that in order to live up to the hype they would need to do more than wrestle with one another, listen to Britney Spears' cds. They came up with the idea to make Keimstock more exclusive in order to make more people want to be there by setting a limit on the number of people allowed through the doors. Due to the events of the previous year it was decided that Sonet should be banned for the sake of everyone else. Along with making Keimstock more exclusive it was also decided that to make the event grow there would to have to be more events happening outside, what was decided was there needed to be music and sports. Though the idea was good in the organizer's minds, mother nature decided that it was not and decided it was a good day to rain, forcing everything back inside. While inside some of the most memorable events of the Keimstock happened, including "Twister - Crtl Z, Hit Undo", "Garry Potter in Give the Paddle", and "Meatballs in the Morning... Eww". The turn out was higher then expected despite the rain and it would pave the road for the last hurrah of Keimstock.
2004 - End With A Bang
After finally finding success with Keimstock the hype of next years Keimstock began immediately. Though the pressure was on to produce an even better Keimstock the planning crew did not falter. Using new talents that they had a learned in the year they were able to add to the anticipation with a classic Battle of the Bands between local bands, The Electric Socks and Satan's Poohole, along with having a local DJ player, and the innovative idea to include the use of Keimstock lights. For the Keimstock of 2004 there was no need to promotion it as it was talked about all year. The idea was that it would be a party for everyone, well not everyone per se, but everyone who was not on the Black List. Again keeping with the idea that if some people were excluded more people would want to come to see what was going one the Black List increased from just Sonet to G.W Bush, Cheney, Saddam, Osama, Steve Guttenberg, and Paul Rubens to name a few. The night of Keimstock 2004 saw a record number of people show up and even the police, which was a shocking thing to happen in the town, after the police declined in joining the party it preceded as if nothing happened. Though some say that it was not as good as the 2003 Keimstock it was certainly larger and ended with a bang.
After Keimstock
The Keim's graduated from high school in 2004 and they decided that it would not be a good idea to keep hosting a high school party once they were graduated. When news that 2004 would be the last Keimstock immediately there were those that wanted to carry on the legacy, in the end the legacy of Keimstock was given away to the local pizza boy who had a delivered a pizza to the Keim residence from across the street.
A "one-hour Thanksgiving dinner" is the practice of preparing a complete Thanksgiving dinner in one hour, assuming the turkey breast is thawed. In contrast, a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for a small family or group of 4-8 people takes many hours to prepare and may involve some preparation the day before. Convenience foods are typically used to simplify the preparation. The use of off the shelf items commonly found in U.S. supermarkets allows for the meal to be prepared in a short time and at a minimal cost, by someone who is not familiar with cooking. The ideal of a one-hour Thanksgiving can also be achieved by modifying or replacing scratch recipes for time efficiency, though the result will often be less than traditional.
History
The consumerization, commodification, de-localization, and acculturation of foods in North American society has been ongoing since the 1950s. The result is that many Americans, especially youths, rely almost entirely on convenience foods. In addition, a great number of Americans do not regularly roast whole turkeys, and therefore find the process to be an imposing one at best.
The development of convenience foods incorporated into the North American diet and supermarket shelves became so wide spread that by the late 1990s they could be used to convincingly replace entirely the Thanksgiving dinner. Most Americans do incorporate convenience foods to some degree, but typically do not create the entire meal from them.
TV chef Rachael Ray, known for her extremely popular "30 Minute Meals" show devoted to quick meals and convenience cooking, did a special presentation on the Food Network in November 2004 called "Thanksgiving in 60". Dishes made included individually portioned stuffed turkey breasts and a quick pumpkin soup. Ray's approach differs from the convenience-food approach in that she tends to do more from-scratch preparation, cutting use of prepackaged foods to a minimum (such as use of frozen vegetables and stuffing mix, but not, say, precooked turkey or prepared meal courses); it also allows for more creativity, though as mentioned above the resulting meal is likely to come up lacking for those not prepared for a "nontraditional" approach to what is for many a highly codified and ritualized meal.
In spite of this, however, Ray's Thanksgiving recipes have earned her praise from viewers who have tried them for themselves. She recently made a sequel to this program called "Thanksgiving in 60 II" for 2006.
Costs and implications
Convenience foods have become so entrenched and available in North America that entire feasts can be prepared from them. Thanksgiving, the quintessential American "banquet" meal, something that home cooks tend to aspire to, a holiday which is only celebrated officially in the U.S. (4th Thursday in November), Argentina (same as Brazil's since the 1990s), Canada (second Monday in October), Japan (Kinro-Kansha-no-hi November 23), Liberia, and Korea (Ch'usok), can be duplicated entirely with prepared foods for about the same cost as two large pizzas. One should note that Thanksgiving is celebrated differently in the Americas than in Asia.
The implications to the American-Macro culture is astounding and indicates an even greater reliance of the culture on convenience foods and is hard for many to take. Even more astounding is that in many urban areas some families will rely completely on fast food, or use even easier to prepare convenience foods, such as TV dinners, for Thanksgiving dinners. In 2003, at least one national fast food chain was selling deep fried whole turkey in November.
Modern U.S. young adults, especially college students who for various reasons cannot travel home for the holiday, typically are not familiar with cooking their own food as a result of fast food restaurants and convenience foods. Young adults, separated by distance from their extended families, in the US may be tempted into purchasing expensive precooked Thanksgiving dinners or going to restaurants such as Denny's on Thanksgiving, both further signs of dependence on the food processing and restaurant industries. Convenience foods created the situation and can be used to correct this to some extent by creating the image of a home-cooked meal, which normally would take hours to prepare. Inexpensive frozen pre-cooked whole turkey breasts became widely available in the late 1990s allowing a Thanksgiving dinner consisting completely of convenience food.
History
The consumerization, commodification, de-localization, and acculturation of foods in North American society has been ongoing since the 1950s. The result is that many Americans, especially youths, rely almost entirely on convenience foods. In addition, a great number of Americans do not regularly roast whole turkeys, and therefore find the process to be an imposing one at best.
The development of convenience foods incorporated into the North American diet and supermarket shelves became so wide spread that by the late 1990s they could be used to convincingly replace entirely the Thanksgiving dinner. Most Americans do incorporate convenience foods to some degree, but typically do not create the entire meal from them.
TV chef Rachael Ray, known for her extremely popular "30 Minute Meals" show devoted to quick meals and convenience cooking, did a special presentation on the Food Network in November 2004 called "Thanksgiving in 60". Dishes made included individually portioned stuffed turkey breasts and a quick pumpkin soup. Ray's approach differs from the convenience-food approach in that she tends to do more from-scratch preparation, cutting use of prepackaged foods to a minimum (such as use of frozen vegetables and stuffing mix, but not, say, precooked turkey or prepared meal courses); it also allows for more creativity, though as mentioned above the resulting meal is likely to come up lacking for those not prepared for a "nontraditional" approach to what is for many a highly codified and ritualized meal.
In spite of this, however, Ray's Thanksgiving recipes have earned her praise from viewers who have tried them for themselves. She recently made a sequel to this program called "Thanksgiving in 60 II" for 2006.
Costs and implications
Convenience foods have become so entrenched and available in North America that entire feasts can be prepared from them. Thanksgiving, the quintessential American "banquet" meal, something that home cooks tend to aspire to, a holiday which is only celebrated officially in the U.S. (4th Thursday in November), Argentina (same as Brazil's since the 1990s), Canada (second Monday in October), Japan (Kinro-Kansha-no-hi November 23), Liberia, and Korea (Ch'usok), can be duplicated entirely with prepared foods for about the same cost as two large pizzas. One should note that Thanksgiving is celebrated differently in the Americas than in Asia.
The implications to the American-Macro culture is astounding and indicates an even greater reliance of the culture on convenience foods and is hard for many to take. Even more astounding is that in many urban areas some families will rely completely on fast food, or use even easier to prepare convenience foods, such as TV dinners, for Thanksgiving dinners. In 2003, at least one national fast food chain was selling deep fried whole turkey in November.
Modern U.S. young adults, especially college students who for various reasons cannot travel home for the holiday, typically are not familiar with cooking their own food as a result of fast food restaurants and convenience foods. Young adults, separated by distance from their extended families, in the US may be tempted into purchasing expensive precooked Thanksgiving dinners or going to restaurants such as Denny's on Thanksgiving, both further signs of dependence on the food processing and restaurant industries. Convenience foods created the situation and can be used to correct this to some extent by creating the image of a home-cooked meal, which normally would take hours to prepare. Inexpensive frozen pre-cooked whole turkey breasts became widely available in the late 1990s allowing a Thanksgiving dinner consisting completely of convenience food.
Megan Meier (1992-October 17, 2006) was an American teenager from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri who committed suicide.
Meier's suicide has been attributed to cyber-bullying through an account on the social networking website Myspace. The account, purportedly belonging to a 16-year old boy named Josh Evans, was created and monitored by the mother of a friend of Meier's. The case has caused several jurisdictions to consider legislation prohibiting harassment over the internet.
Background
Meier was active in several activities, including swimming, boating, and fishing. She had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and depression, and considered herself overweight.
Death
Soon after opening an account on Myspace, Meier received a message from a boy named "Josh Evans." "Evans" said he was 16 years old and Meier thought he was attractive. Meier began to exchange messages with Evans, and was described by family as having had her "spirits lifted". she was pronounced dead the following day. The parent's name has been excluded from most news stories, but her name was disclosed on many blogs and by CNN when they included a copy of the police report on their broadcast of this story.
Reaction to news story
Megan's story was first reported in the St. Louis Suburban Journal. Due to the vehement public reaction, police added additional patrols to the neighborhood, and the adults responsible have installed a security camera.
Meier's suicide has been attributed to cyber-bullying through an account on the social networking website Myspace. The account, purportedly belonging to a 16-year old boy named Josh Evans, was created and monitored by the mother of a friend of Meier's. The case has caused several jurisdictions to consider legislation prohibiting harassment over the internet.
Background
Meier was active in several activities, including swimming, boating, and fishing. She had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and depression, and considered herself overweight.
Death
Soon after opening an account on Myspace, Meier received a message from a boy named "Josh Evans." "Evans" said he was 16 years old and Meier thought he was attractive. Meier began to exchange messages with Evans, and was described by family as having had her "spirits lifted". she was pronounced dead the following day. The parent's name has been excluded from most news stories, but her name was disclosed on many blogs and by CNN when they included a copy of the police report on their broadcast of this story.
Reaction to news story
Megan's story was first reported in the St. Louis Suburban Journal. Due to the vehement public reaction, police added additional patrols to the neighborhood, and the adults responsible have installed a security camera.
Convulsive therapy is the deliberate and controlled induction of a seizure or other disturbance of brain function for the purpose of psychiatric treatment. Convulsive therapy attempts to produce this state artificially and under controlled conditions, on the premise that seizures can induce improvement in the patient's mental state once the patient recovers.
History
Physicians have noticed for thousands of years that a person's mental state sometimes changes dramatically following recovery from a seizure whether induced by a head injury, an intense febrile illness such as malaria, or chemically induced loss of consciousness or convulsions. In the time of the Roman Empire, for instance, electric fish were used to provide electric shocks to ill patients. For example, Scribonius Largus used it in AD 47 for treating persistent headaches. It is said that the Emperor Claudius himself was one of his patients.
Other instances of medical use of convulsive therapy were Paracelsus, who used seizures induced by camphor to treat psychosis in the 16th century; Drs. Jean LeRoy (France, 1745), Robert Whytt (London, 1751) and Leonard Yealland (London, 1917), all of whom used weak (non-convulsive) faradic electrical shocks to treat various "nervous, hypochondriac, or hysteric" cases as well as men suffering "shell-shock."
The rationale which supported the convulsive treatment strategy may also have been partly related to the 18th century rational in medicine which saw the 'breaking of the will' of the patient as necessary to cure insane persons.
With the rise of more biological explanations for mental disease at the end of the 19th century, the search for biological treatments also increased. In a short decade between the 1920s and the 1930s, several methods were developed by scientists who started to experiment with seizure-inducing techniques. Due to the absence of any effective therapeutic approaches to mental disease, and because it sometimes lead to remarkable immediately observable changes in patients, in the next two or three decades convulsive therapy became one of the most widely used tools of psychiatry. Hundreds of thousands of patients were subjected to it, including many important personalities, such as writers Ernest Hemingway and Janet Frame, poets Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell, performer Paul Robeson, rock star Lou Reed, film actresses Frances Farmer, Vivien Leigh, Clara Bow and Gene Tierney, pianists Vladimir Horowitz and Oscar Levant, talk show host Dick Cavett, mathematician John Forbes Nash, author and philosopher Robert Pirsig and politician Thomas Eagleton.
Though popular in the first half of the 20th century, most convulsive therapies are now considered ineffective or too risky for general use. Only electroconvulsive therapy- also referred to as ECT- is still used today. It is reserved for particularly severe, treatment-resistant and life-threatening mental illness.
Methods
Various types of convulsive therapy were common until the mid or late 20th century. However, doubts over long-term benefits, ethical concerns, and advances in psychiatric drugs, psychotherapies and supportive services led to decreased use. Under this definition of convulsive therapy, which excludes similar treatments involving the passage of current through the body for therapeutic ends such as cardioversion and defibrillation, electroconvulsive therapy is the only type of convulsive therapy still practiced in the 21st century, though controversial and intended to be mainly restricted to severe cases of depression and bipolar disorder which have not responded to other kinds of therapies.
* Electroconvulsive therapy or ECT, involves inducing a grand mal seizure in a patient by passing an electrical current through the brain. It was discovered by Italian researchers Ugo Cerletti (1877-1963) and Lucio Bini (1908-1964). It is used today, albeit with restricted indications, such as usually treatment resistant depression or bipolar affective disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder or anxiety disorders. In these cases, it is considered a safe and effective procedure, when carried out under a clinical protocol which involves EEG monitoring, application of muscle blocking agents and general anesthesia or sedation. A typical course of ECT involves between six and twelve treatment sessions spaced every other day. The number of treatments is determined by the rate of the patient's response.
* Malarial fever therapy involves the inoculation of malarial protozoa into the bloodstream of patients, in order to provoke episodes of intense fever and unconsciousness, which are sometimes followed by convulsions. The method was discovered by an Austrian physician Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857-1940) in the 1910s, who got the Nobel Prize for his discovery in 1927. For a while, it was used for treating the general paresis of the insane, caused by tertiary syphilis. It is no longer used.
* Insulin shock therapy involves injecting a patient with a large amount of insulin, which causes convulsions and coma by provoking brain hypoglycemia. It was discovered by Polish physician and researcher Manfred Sakel (1900-1957) in 1933 and was used well until the 1950s for the treatment of depression and psychosis. However, the insulin coma could become irreversible, and a 1939 report found the procedure had a 1.3% mortality from this cause . It is also rarely used now.
* Metrazol shock therapy involves injecting a patient with Metrazol (cardiazol), a drug that quickly induces powerful brain seizures. It was discovered by Hungarian physician and researcher Ladislas J. Meduna (1896-1964) in 1934 and further researched by Francis Reitmann It was soon superseded by electroconvulsive therapy, because it was difficult to control and had many adverse effects. The violence of the convulsions produced hairline fractures in the vertebrae of many patients, especially those who already suffered from vitamin D deficiency due to the poor diet in psychiatric hospitals .
*Pharmacological shock was a general term for convulsive therapy by injecting chemicals such as insulin or metrazol . Psychiatrists in the 1930s also experimented with other chemicals including camphor or ammonium chloride to induce convulsions in their patients.
Mechanisms of action
The mechanism of action by which convulsive therapies might exert any lasting effect is unknown. A generic defense mechanism might be at work following a seizure. Alternatively a post-traumatic stress reaction might be induced. Long-standing neural networks or cognitive-behavioural patterns, associated with psychopathology, could potentially be disrupted.
When convulsive therapies were most used, science had no effective tools to study their effects. Studies about the underlying mechanism of electroconvulsive therapy, commonly known as ECT, still continue. Many hypotheses have been proposed, including potential effects on neurotransmitters, but the precise mechanism remains elusive.
History
Physicians have noticed for thousands of years that a person's mental state sometimes changes dramatically following recovery from a seizure whether induced by a head injury, an intense febrile illness such as malaria, or chemically induced loss of consciousness or convulsions. In the time of the Roman Empire, for instance, electric fish were used to provide electric shocks to ill patients. For example, Scribonius Largus used it in AD 47 for treating persistent headaches. It is said that the Emperor Claudius himself was one of his patients.
Other instances of medical use of convulsive therapy were Paracelsus, who used seizures induced by camphor to treat psychosis in the 16th century; Drs. Jean LeRoy (France, 1745), Robert Whytt (London, 1751) and Leonard Yealland (London, 1917), all of whom used weak (non-convulsive) faradic electrical shocks to treat various "nervous, hypochondriac, or hysteric" cases as well as men suffering "shell-shock."
The rationale which supported the convulsive treatment strategy may also have been partly related to the 18th century rational in medicine which saw the 'breaking of the will' of the patient as necessary to cure insane persons.
With the rise of more biological explanations for mental disease at the end of the 19th century, the search for biological treatments also increased. In a short decade between the 1920s and the 1930s, several methods were developed by scientists who started to experiment with seizure-inducing techniques. Due to the absence of any effective therapeutic approaches to mental disease, and because it sometimes lead to remarkable immediately observable changes in patients, in the next two or three decades convulsive therapy became one of the most widely used tools of psychiatry. Hundreds of thousands of patients were subjected to it, including many important personalities, such as writers Ernest Hemingway and Janet Frame, poets Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell, performer Paul Robeson, rock star Lou Reed, film actresses Frances Farmer, Vivien Leigh, Clara Bow and Gene Tierney, pianists Vladimir Horowitz and Oscar Levant, talk show host Dick Cavett, mathematician John Forbes Nash, author and philosopher Robert Pirsig and politician Thomas Eagleton.
Though popular in the first half of the 20th century, most convulsive therapies are now considered ineffective or too risky for general use. Only electroconvulsive therapy- also referred to as ECT- is still used today. It is reserved for particularly severe, treatment-resistant and life-threatening mental illness.
Methods
Various types of convulsive therapy were common until the mid or late 20th century. However, doubts over long-term benefits, ethical concerns, and advances in psychiatric drugs, psychotherapies and supportive services led to decreased use. Under this definition of convulsive therapy, which excludes similar treatments involving the passage of current through the body for therapeutic ends such as cardioversion and defibrillation, electroconvulsive therapy is the only type of convulsive therapy still practiced in the 21st century, though controversial and intended to be mainly restricted to severe cases of depression and bipolar disorder which have not responded to other kinds of therapies.
* Electroconvulsive therapy or ECT, involves inducing a grand mal seizure in a patient by passing an electrical current through the brain. It was discovered by Italian researchers Ugo Cerletti (1877-1963) and Lucio Bini (1908-1964). It is used today, albeit with restricted indications, such as usually treatment resistant depression or bipolar affective disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder or anxiety disorders. In these cases, it is considered a safe and effective procedure, when carried out under a clinical protocol which involves EEG monitoring, application of muscle blocking agents and general anesthesia or sedation. A typical course of ECT involves between six and twelve treatment sessions spaced every other day. The number of treatments is determined by the rate of the patient's response.
* Malarial fever therapy involves the inoculation of malarial protozoa into the bloodstream of patients, in order to provoke episodes of intense fever and unconsciousness, which are sometimes followed by convulsions. The method was discovered by an Austrian physician Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857-1940) in the 1910s, who got the Nobel Prize for his discovery in 1927. For a while, it was used for treating the general paresis of the insane, caused by tertiary syphilis. It is no longer used.
* Insulin shock therapy involves injecting a patient with a large amount of insulin, which causes convulsions and coma by provoking brain hypoglycemia. It was discovered by Polish physician and researcher Manfred Sakel (1900-1957) in 1933 and was used well until the 1950s for the treatment of depression and psychosis. However, the insulin coma could become irreversible, and a 1939 report found the procedure had a 1.3% mortality from this cause . It is also rarely used now.
* Metrazol shock therapy involves injecting a patient with Metrazol (cardiazol), a drug that quickly induces powerful brain seizures. It was discovered by Hungarian physician and researcher Ladislas J. Meduna (1896-1964) in 1934 and further researched by Francis Reitmann It was soon superseded by electroconvulsive therapy, because it was difficult to control and had many adverse effects. The violence of the convulsions produced hairline fractures in the vertebrae of many patients, especially those who already suffered from vitamin D deficiency due to the poor diet in psychiatric hospitals .
*Pharmacological shock was a general term for convulsive therapy by injecting chemicals such as insulin or metrazol . Psychiatrists in the 1930s also experimented with other chemicals including camphor or ammonium chloride to induce convulsions in their patients.
Mechanisms of action
The mechanism of action by which convulsive therapies might exert any lasting effect is unknown. A generic defense mechanism might be at work following a seizure. Alternatively a post-traumatic stress reaction might be induced. Long-standing neural networks or cognitive-behavioural patterns, associated with psychopathology, could potentially be disrupted.
When convulsive therapies were most used, science had no effective tools to study their effects. Studies about the underlying mechanism of electroconvulsive therapy, commonly known as ECT, still continue. Many hypotheses have been proposed, including potential effects on neurotransmitters, but the precise mechanism remains elusive.