{"id":30666,"date":"2025-06-27T21:57:57","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T21:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=30666"},"modified":"2025-06-27T22:25:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T22:25:08","slug":"max-fink-champion-of-electroconvulsive-therapy-dies-at-102","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=30666","title":{"rendered":"Max Fink, Champion of Electroconvulsive Therapy, Dies at 102"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As a psychiatry resident, he became convinced of the benefits of ECT. But he spent years battling detractors and a misleading pop-culture depiction of the procedure.<\/p>\n

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Max Fink, a psychiatrist and neurologist who advanced the acceptance of electroconvulsive therapy as an option for treating severely depressed patients who do not respond to drugs or psychotherapy, died on June 15 in Westfield, Mass. He was 102.<\/p>\n

His death, at a senior living community, was confirmed by his son, Jonathan Fink.<\/p>\n

Dr. Fink believed that electroconvulsive therapy was a potent treatment \u2014 and shouldn\u2019t be considered a last resort \u2014 for patients who are suicidal or suffering from delusions.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany severely depressed patients are maintained for weeks, for months and even years on antidepressant drugs,\u201d he told a conference on depression in Philadelphia in 1988. \u201cAre we not unfair when we do this to our patients when ECT remains an active and excellent treatment?\u201d<\/p>\n

He first witnessed the use of ECT in 1952, on his first day as a neurology and psychiatry resident at Hillside Hospital (now Zucker Hillside Hospital, a part of Northwell), in Queens. One by one, he watched as five patients \u2014 under restraints, with rubber bite-blocks in their mouths and electrodes applied to their temples \u2014 received enough electrical current to induce a grand mal seizure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cObserving a full grand mal seizure in each patient jarred me,\u201d he wrote in 2017 in an unpublished memoir<\/a> for Stony Brook University in New York, where he worked for many years. But over the next few months, he continued, \u201cI had learned that ECT effectively reduced suicide thoughts, relieved negativism, aggression, depressed and manic moods. Of the hospital populations, the patients treated with electroshock improved the most.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Dr. Fink was convinced of ECT\u2019s positive effects, others in the psychiatric profession weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

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As a psychiatry resident, he became convinced of the benefits of ECT. But he spent years battling detractors and a misleading pop-culture depiction of the procedure.Max Fink, a psychiatrist and neurologist who advanced the acceptance of electroconvulsive therapy as an option for treating severely depressed patients who do not respond to drugs or psychotherapy, died on June 15 in Westfield, Mass. He was 102.His death, at a senior living community, was confirmed by his son, Jonathan Fink.Dr. Fink believed that electroconvulsive therapy was a potent treatment \u2014 and shouldn\u2019t be considered a last resort \u2014 for patients who are suicidal or suffering from delusions.\u201cMany severely depressed patients are maintained for weeks, for months and even years on antidepressant drugs,\u201d he told a conference on depression in Philadelphia in 1988. \u201cAre we not unfair when we do this to our patients when ECT remains an active and excellent treatment?\u201dHe first witnessed the use of ECT in 1952, on his first day as a neurology and psychiatry resident at Hillside Hospital (now Zucker Hillside Hospital, a part of Northwell), in Queens. One by one, he watched as five patients \u2014 under restraints, with rubber bite-blocks in their mouths and electrodes applied to their temples \u2014 received enough electrical current to induce a grand mal seizure.\u201cObserving a full grand mal seizure in each patient jarred me,\u201d he wrote in 2017 in an unpublished memoir for Stony Brook University in New York, where he worked for many years. But over the next few months, he continued, \u201cI had learned that ECT effectively reduced suicide thoughts, relieved negativism, aggression, depressed and manic moods. Of the hospital populations, the patients treated with electroshock improved the most.\u201dAlthough Dr. Fink was convinced of ECT\u2019s positive effects, others in the psychiatric profession weren\u2019t.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30668,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30666"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30669,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30666\/revisions\/30669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}