I don’t know how many people know the name "Yang Yongxin".

He was once known as an expert on Internet addiction, claiming to be able to use electroshock therapy to cure Internet addiction among teenagers.

After being exposed in 2009 for treating children in extreme ways, he seemingly disappeared. But after so many years, he is still "helping children overcome Internet addiction." Until August this year, it was exposed by several netizens on Weibo.

What we are going to talk about today is the electroshock therapy (a more scientific name should be "electroshock therapy") that is regarded as a god by Yang Yongxin and the so-called parents.

In the 1930s, when modern medicine had just started, people’s understanding of the working mechanism of the human brain was still at a blank stage, and they could not correctly understand the pathogenesis of mental diseases.

The treatment methods for mental patients are even more limited - either find someone to perform exorcism, or send them to a mental hospital.

The psychiatrists at that time were almost conducting experiments on their patients. In order to calm the violent patients, they successively invented various unreliable therapies. For example, the famous ice pick therapy involves inserting a steel needle into the patient's eye socket and crushing the patient's frontal lobe.

After receiving this therapy, patients often become extremely calm and numb, like walking zombies - of course, the frontal lobe controls memory, judgment, analysis, thinking, operation, etc. Function. Destroying this area is equivalent to destroying most of the patient's personality, and they will not be complete for the rest of their lives.

The traditional electroconvulsive therapy ECT (Electro-convulsive therapy, also called electroconvulsive therapy) also appeared during this period.

During treatment, doctors use an electroconvulsive machine to stimulate the patient's brain with an appropriate amount of current, thereby inducing epileptiform discharges in the brain, causing the patient to lose consciousness and have convulsions all over the body, thereby achieving the purpose of controlling mental symptoms.

A vivid metaphor is: there seems to be something wrong with the brain. Although we (doctors in the last century) don’t know why this is the case, it is always okay to force an electric shock to restart it. Come on, 1, 2, 3...

The origin of electroconvulsive therapy can be traced back to 1934.

In 1934, Dr. Ladislas Joseph Meduna, who was in his early 30s, was engaged in psychiatric research at the University of Budapest, Hungary. One day, while browsing the literature, he saw the statement that epilepsy can prevent mental illness, and then he had an immature guess: "Can artificially induced grand mal epileptic seizures improve mental symptoms?"

He began to search for Experimental subjects and drugs that can induce epilepsy, and finally decided to use camphor oil for experiments. The first experiment was conducted on January 2, 1934. Three of the 11 patients developed epileptic symptoms, which greatly enhanced the doctor's confidence.

Next, he injected a 25% concentration of camphor oil into a 33-year-old male schizophrenia patient and successfully induced epilepsy. After 5 repetitions, the patient's stupor improved ( Stupor: A state of heightened psychomotor inhibition that occurs in severely mentally ill patients).

This experiment caused a sensation in the psychiatric community at the time.

Doctors are very enthusiastic about treatments that induce epilepsy and improve mental illness, but not everyone wants to take the drug-induced route. While Medner was working hard in Hungary, his colleagues Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini were studying the relationship between electrical stimulation and neuromotor in Rome. The inspiration for this series of studies came from watching pigs being stunned and then slaughtered in a slaughterhouse.

The two doctors speculate that if electric current is passed through both sides of the head of a mental patient, it may be possible to correct their madness, or at least make them more compliant.

The device they developed is this↓

That is, two electric shocks are placed on both sides of the patient's brain to release current, causing the current to pass directly through the brain, causing epilepsy.

In 1938, the first experiment began, with a severely mentally ill patient being treated. During the treatment, the patient was energized with 80V voltage for the first time, and there was only a brief loss of consciousness after 0.1 seconds. When the voltage of 90V was applied again, the patient began to convulse like a petit mal epilepsy 0.1 seconds later. After the third stronger electrical stimulation, the patient suffered a massive convulsion all over his body and completely lost consciousness. (Note: China's household circuit voltage is 220V, while the voltage standard in the United States and Japan is 110V)

When the electric shock begins, the patient will be tied to the bed and put on braces to prevent them from biting due to too much pain. Cut off your own tongue. The pain caused by the electric shock itself is self-evident, and many patients will also suffer fractures due to muscle stiffness and twitching caused by epilepsy. The despair of being tied to the bed and unable to survive or die is unimaginable to ordinary people.

In order to reduce the pain of patients, doctors began to use muscle relaxants together with electric shocks in the 1940s, shortly after the promotion of ECT therapy, in an effort to relax the patients' muscles and avoid secondary injuries.

In 1955, Salzman introduced intravenous induction anesthetics into ECT, so that patients could receive ECT under anesthesia, thus avoiding unnecessary pain. Since then, electroconvulsive therapy has become more humane and more formal.

So, is electroconvulsive therapy used for mentally ill patients and performed only after respecting the patient's own wishes useful?

It is useful, but it is not a panacea and has a lot of side effects.

The literature shows that ECT treatment is effective in about 50% of patients with treatment-resistant major depression. There are few studies on follow-up, but about half of the patients have relapse within one year. In addition, it has special effects on stupor, physical illness, and acute exacerbations of schizophrenia, and is very suitable for severely mentally ill patients who have suicidal tendencies or the tendency to injure others.

At the same time, it can also cause many sequelae including lowered IQ, brain dysfunction and learning disabilities. One of the most obvious symptoms is memory loss.

In a 2013 report, the BBC tracked the lives of many mental patients after receiving ECT, and most of them mentioned memory problems.

Helen Crane underwent two ECT treatments in the late 1990s, erasing several years of her memory including overseas travel and major family events: "After the ECT test, I suddenly had memories about my mother. A foreboding feeling. I asked my husband what happened to my mother, and he told me that she passed away about two years ago."

For this reason, ECT therapy has been listed by the Food and Drug Administration. In the third level (high risk) category. It can be used as a last-line psychiatric intervention for major depression, mania and schizophrenia only with the consent of a physician. Several states in the United States still prohibit the practice of this therapy because it is too inhumane.

Then, let’s return to Yang Yongxin.

Are these so-called "Internet addicted teenagers" suffering from severe mental illness? no. Many of them are not even addicted to the Internet, they are just disobeying their parents.

When Yang Yongxin gave them electric shocks, did he comply with ECT standards for anesthesia and reduce the patient's pain? No.

Is Yang Yongxin’s electric shock treatment method to induce brain epilepsy or to use fear and pain to make people surrender? It's the latter.

He is not the first psychiatrist in the world to do something to children. From the early 1940s, the world-renowned pediatric neuropsychologist Lauretta Bender was very interested in studying children with schizophrenia, so she conducted electric shock experiments on at least 100 children aged 3 to 12 years old at Bellevue Hospital in New York. She sometimes performed it every day Children with schizophrenia (some younger than 3 years old) were electroshocked twice for 20 days. Some of the children who were experimented became violent and suicidal.

Who sent these children and teenagers to these two "doctors"?

It’s a parent.

When their children have problems with their education, become addicted to the Internet, or become rebellious and disobedient, they think to themselves, "Just a power-on will be enough." He likes to play games, falls in love prematurely, and is disobedient. "Just give him a quick phone call and he'll be fine."

I don’t reflect on my own problems at all.

In the video in 2009 when Chai Jing exposed Yang Yongxin’s electroshock therapy, she asked these parents and children many questions.

Electroconvulsive therapy is just one controversial page in the history of psychiatry. But there are very clear and specific restrictions on how to use it and for what purpose.

What’s ridiculous is that Yang Yongxin and his parents obviously don’t feel that they have done anything excessive.

These parents may hope that their children will eventually "change their bad ways" and say "thank you" to them. But most "internet addicted teenagers" are looking forward to a "sorry".

They may not all wait.