Cattle Prod Therapy

........................... Between 1974 and 1989, West received at least $5,110,099 in grants from the federal government, channeled through the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) a major funding conduit for CIA programs. ...........................

     Before stepping down as director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute, West reportedly allowed psychiatric “treatments” that were more suited to brainwashing, “mind control” or a torture chamber than for resolving mental troubles. It was reported in 1976, for example, that Neuropsychiatric Institute psychiatrist Ivar Lovass had used electric cattle prods for “aversion therapy” on children.

     As one newspaper stated at the time, “Farrell Instruments Company, the same firm which supplies other shocking equipment for UCLA’s ’Clockwork Orange’ experiments on 3- to 12-year-old boys ... recognizes that aversion therapy techniques are often cruel. An example, the company says, ‘is the use of cattle prods which have high voltage that produces skin destruction.’ Dr. Lovass and his partner in psychiatry, Dr. George Reker, however, favor the use of — and have used — cattle prods on children who are not mentally ill or criminal or who have not violated any law or rule — young boys merely thought to be ‘effeminate.’”

     Lovass — hired by West — also allegedly shocked 5-year-old twins to “modify” behavior, with jolts administered through a grid system in the floor that enabled the psychiatrists to blast the children wherever they moved in the room.

     Despite the violence that marked the work of West and his cohorts, or perhaps because of it, he enjoyed influence in the psychiatric community, serving for example on the National Advisory Council to the NIMH. From his positions, he could have charted a far more humane and helpful course for mental health, rather than brain-damaging drugs and electric shock.

     As part of his legacy, the NIMH continues to squander billions in taxpayer dollars to fund research on brain-damaging substances, rather than genuine cures. The true cost — impossible to measure in money — lies in the Americans now dead from psychiatric drugs and electric shock or, still living, existing as little more than vegetables.

     The secrecy and false information that for decades cloaked West’s activities continue to shroud the effects of the treatments he promoted and which are still in use. And today, the living hell that Melissa Holliday experienced still exists for nameless others you probably won’t read about in the press. 

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