Linda Andre

Linda Andre (1959 – 2023) was an American psychiatric survivor activist and writer, living in New York City, who was 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 electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) machines.[1][2]

Anti-ECT activism

Since receiving ECT in the early 1980s at age 25, Andre wrote and researched to help other ECT survivors cope with their cognitive and memory losses, and inform the general public about the risks of ECT. Linda was interviewed by 20/20, The Atlantic, the New York Times[3] and the Washington Post.

Interviewed by the Los Angeles Times in 2003, Andre commented on a British study that found that when patients helped to 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 Andre, "...you get a completely different story from the one psychiatrists are telling."[4] She and her friends formed the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry with over 500 former electric shock patients.[5]

In 2009, her book, Doctors of Deception: What they don't want you to know about shock treatment, was published. Reviewing this work, James Wood, of the University of Edinburgh wrote in the journal the Social History of Medicine, "[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.[2]

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 25 April 2005.
  • Andre, Linda (2009). Doctors of Deception: What They Don't Want You to Know About Shock Treatment. New York. ISBN 9780813546520.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

See also

References
  1. "Testimony of Linda Andre, Director of Committee for Truth in Psychiatry". HealthyPlace. 18 May 2001. Archived from the original on 27 September 2011. Retrieved 12 May 2016.
    - Kneeland, Timothy W.; Warren, Carol A. B. (2002). Pushbutton Psychiatry: A History of Electroshock in America. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780275968151.
  2. Wood, James (April 2010). "Linda Andre, Doctors of Deception: What They Don't Want You to Know About Shock Treatment (review)". Social History of Medicine. 23 (1): 218–219. doi:10.1093/shm/hkp135.
  3. Foderaro, Lisa W. (19 July 1993). "With Reforms in Treatment, Shock Therapy Loses Shock". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 12 May 2016.
  4. Carey, Benedict (17 November 2003). "Shock therapy and the brain". Los Angeles Times. ISSN 0458-3035. Archived from the original on 11 October 2012. Retrieved 12 May 2016.
  5. "Linda Andre". National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy.


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