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China Bans Shock Treatment For Internet Addiction
angry tapir writes "China has banned the use of shock therapy to treat Internet addiction after its use at one hospital sparked nationwide controversy. The hospital drew wide media coverage in recent months after Internet users claiming to have received the treatment wrote in blogs and forums about being tied down and subjected to shocks for 30 minutes at a time."
Nothing gave me more pleasure that thinking of WOW power levelers with electrodes attached to various body parts.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
So is there a list of "illnesses" that they do still treat with electrical shocks or is it okay for pretty much everything except internet addiction?
Does China even have such a thing as "nationwide controvery"? Or is the "nation" here the United States? Or maybe Canada?
--
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"Some Chinese medical experts still believe shock treatment for Internet addiction does not harm children, but the majority disavow it, said Tao Ran, the founder of a Beijing treatment center Web-addicted teens, during a recent interview."
Sure, as long as you're only worried about their physical health, I'm sure it doesn't... Too bad it scars them for life mentally.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Honestly, this seems like another human rights abuse... people should have the right to choose if they want to go through shock therapy!
but did we really require the big pic there?
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
For those of you who have never seen this movie (am I really that old? ) this scene involved Bill Murray's character administering shock treatments as negative reinforcement when the test subject was unable to guess what was printed on the other side of a card he held up.
He tests some poor schmoe who gets close to half of them right, but he gets shocked on every card anyway.
Then he tests a potential future girlfriend and never shocks her at all, even though she misses every card.
Shock therapy as a way to screen your dates. Interesting concept.
Now get off my lawn!
In other news... "Internet addicts treated with electricity". The real story here is that this is there to be banned in the first place.
Is this to cure internet addiction or a reason to punish those that bypassed chinas censorship... hmmmm
When electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is used in psychiatric settings here in the West, patients are completely unconscious and pumped full of muscle relaxants to keep them from jumping all over the table. Since they're unconscious, they feel no pain.. completely different from what the Chinese seem to be doing, which seeks to use electric shock as painful punishment for too much WOW.
Needless to say, I didn't RTFA.
The hospital drew wide media coverage in recent months after Internet users claiming to have received the treatment wrote in blogs and forums
So the internet addicted patients used the internet to complain about the problems with the internet addiction treatment?
That is not shock treatment. The currently accepted method of shock therapy is designed to treat epilepsy. They were using it for negative reinforcement. Its just as effective as torturing someone. This is definitely a human rights violation and the genius behind this should be punished.
I don't believe the story. Sounds too silly and arbitrary
Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
...Ours go to 11 amps.
This seems like a great way to create psychological maladjustment.
Presuming, of course, you do not already consider "internet addiction" to be maladjustment.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
The Chinese dude in the picture sure isn't enjoying the game.
I wonder if the symptoms of "internet addiction" the authorities look for include 'seeking inaccurate information' from 'undesirable sites' or possibly 'spreading rumours' or 'inciting unrest'?
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
Why didn't they just randomly replace images requested by the "addict"'s computer with goatse?
That's a shock therapy that would actually work.
Next stop, Beethoven's Ode to Joy...
Congratulations! You got it. Where do we send your free beer and pizza?
I, for one, am shocked!
Some random "professor" (name omitted) started advertising a way to treat Internet addiction by electrically shocking his subjects.
More ridiculously, there were actually quite a handful of parents who paid thousands of dollars sending their kids to his "addiction camp".
Several months later, the government finally took action, and rumor had it that the guy didn't pay the communist party well enough.
There is no such thing as Internet addiction, but only the stupidity of Chinese parents.
This really raises the question: Is the internet a viable addiction? I think it's worthwhile to look at a person's patterns. How does your internet use mirror or not mirror that of an addict?
I have my doubts, but the question is worth asking and I'd like to hear your opinions.
I completely disagree with the electrocution, as it has been scientifically proven to do more harm than good to any mind, especially by just randomly jolting the brain.
If western-style ECT were being used on the Chinese WOW addicts, they wouldn't remember the event, and wouldn't be complaining about it. They would be happily going about their business, though in a slightly dazed fashion.
A thing about ECT is that it wipes recent memories in a retrograde fashion. Memories of the most recent events are wiped first, then as more current is applied, less recent memories begin to disappear. If it is felt that a patient would be better off without memory of a recent traumatic event, ECT is sometimes applied to wipe it.
Now that this is banned, where will those parents send those kids to treat this "disorder"? How long before Pfizer creates Zinternex - a new drug used to help combat internet addiction? (Side effects may include nausea, vomiting, anal leakage, acne, etc... etc...)
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
after Internet users claiming to have received the treatment wrote in blogs and forums about being tied down and subjected to shocks for 30 minutes at a time
Wow. There's a shock. Not only was it unethical; it was also ineffective.
This isn't ECT. This appears to be aversion therapy. Just because it's done wrong and the shocking last long doesn't make it any different. The same has happened at Judge Rotenberg Center in the United States where a slightly more brutal form is used (kids permanently strapped to devices triggered by remote control).
... the therapy was banned because it didn't work, as after 30 minutes of shock, the pacients ran to write about it in INTERNET forums and blogs.
Here I thought China was all about old school alternative medicines like acupuncture and the like. Electro shock treatments seem barbaric in my mind. No ancient chinese remedy for you internet addicts round here. We shock you!
Since the once child per family policy I'd imagine that children are pressured a lot to be successful in their studies, and is important enough for parents to shock their kids out of Wow so they can study more. I think this is a sign of changing times in china to a more modern social landscape, where internet use is widespread. The parents in China who send their kids to get shock treatments in this article probably never had access to internet or computers in their teens so they don't understand why their kids are spending a lot of time on computers. I think this is more of a clash between the old and the new, the "internet-addicted" children representing western social landscape and the anti-internet-addiction side representing the older generations which were stricter.
No, I'm wired.
...after Internet users claiming to have received the treatment wrote in blogs and forums about being tied down and subjected to shocks for 30 minutes at a time."
They received electric shocks for Internet addiction, and then rushed right out to blog about it?
I'd say that's a pretty good indication that their condition is hopeless.....
That parents have to deceive their kids. Then, it's a social ill that some of these games actually replace other outlets.
I first read about this last week, on the 9th (no, i never bothered submitting, because nothing i ever suggested for submission gets posted by /.)
http://www.itworld.com/internet/70777/chinese-web-addicts-get-boot-camp-therapy
Personally, though, i think some form of boot camp needs to be here in the US, but not just for gaming. LOTS of anti-social behaviors could be addressed. At least for those who are averse to getting away from long-session gaming. I personally broke my addictions to Half-Life, Counterstrike, Soldier of Fortune, and Longbow Apache in 2004 when i donated my joysticks, media, and pedals to Goodwill before taking my trip to Japan. I also gave away the supporting hardware. It's been QUITE a relief to not be sitting like a zombie in my chair from Friday 22200 thru Sunday 2100...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
World of Warcraft addiction is now no longer treated with shock therapy. More severe cases of internet abuse, such as an addiction to writing overly uppity blog entries, on the other hand...
In other news Hospital in Shandong ceases shock treatments for Internet Addiction, due to ban, starts performing full frontal Lobotomies instead, claims the procedure is 98% effective at quashing internet addictions.
I have a friend who went through ECT for severe depression. Given she was sectioned into a psychiatric hospital by her parents without consent, I'd be hard pressed to say her ECT was with informed consent, or even if it was overall a positive force in her life, the side effects have been pretty traumatic for her. Not to mention the effect it had on her realitionship with her family.
She was over 21 when she was committed, with a university degree and had been holding down a job as webmaster for a Teir 1 bank in Australia.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
goes straight back to blogging after 30 minutes of shock therapy for blogging too much? I would never touch my keyboard again.
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
That is sad. Sometimes it seems like the mental health field is out of control.
so they were being given electric shock torture as punishment for masturbation.
and i hate my government and other moralistic hypocrits for making responsible use of cannabis illegal, punishable by jail rape.
the chinese government trys to tell the populace they should be following moral ideals while they are making decisions for peoples own "good". its just not consistent.
Yeah, let's treat their desire for fictional war games by teaching them how to fight for real. And let's help their social skills, by making them not talk while someone yells in their face.
Playing a game isn't anti-social, btw, you presumably mean "unsociable", and I hope you include "watching TV", "reading a book" and "sitting at home quietly with a cup of tea" as similar "unsociable" activities. OTOH, teenagers who go out to the pub every night are doing fine...
For actual anti-social behaviours, I believe that boot camps have been tried in the US for young offenders. It's unclear how effective they actually are though.
Too bad it is still legal to Electroshock 6 year olds, here in the US. There is a lot of profit in it.
Doesn't seem to have been an effective treatment then, does it =P
Surveys of legislators and health insurance industry personnel in the United States reveal an appalling level of misinformation about electroshock. Deceived by psychiatry's propaganda machine, the majority are content to leave it up to the "experts." While openly admitting that they have no idea how Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT) works, psychiatrists have no trouble in arrogantly assuming the mantle of "expert." But who are the real victims and what is the real cost? With the hundreds of thousands of people being subjected to electroshock around the world each year, this is a story of ruined lives. Today, the psychiatric industry in the United States alone takes an estimated $5 billion from ECT per year. In spite of its sophisticated trappings of science, the brutality of ECT verifies that psychiatry has not advanced beyond the cruelty and barbarism of its earliest treatments. Physically intrusive practices such as ECT violate the doctor's pledge to uphold the Hippocratic Oath and "Do no harm." ECT should be labeled for what it is - torture - and it should be banned worldwide. Get the facts by reading the CCHR publication The Brutal Reality: Harmful Psychiatric 'Treatments' - Report and recommendations on the destructive practices of electroshock and psychosurgery. (http://www.cchrstl.org/documents/ect.pdf) Once armed with the facts, we are confident you will form part of the rapidly growing voice of protest that will be the final demise of this cruel and inhuman practice. Write your state and federal legislators and tell them to ban electric shock.