Since its introduction a year ago, the StayOnTop Mobile Electro-Shock Device has quickly become a tremendous success. Even our most optimistic business plan had not predicted that the “Mobishock” (as people nicknamed it) would become this popular! Mass-produced for us by Wanquan Fengkuang Inc. in Guangzhou, China, nearly half a million Mobishocks have been sold by now. ;-)
Wherever you look, in city buses, pubs, churches, college classrooms, on the street, everywhere you can now see severely depressed people pulling a Mobishock from their bag, attaching it, and quickly shocking themselves back to life. Within a minute, they’re sparkling, shining, and smiling again.
The Mobishock will certainly remain successful for years to come. It works absolutely great. But there were a few minor problems with it.
Several depressed customers began to complain about the Mobishock’s heaviness and bulk. And we have to admit it’s not really small, you always need to carry it around with you in a special bag. So we asked our engineers (all depressed people themselves, naturally) to develop an even better solution.
Guess what they came up with? Right: the unique, innovative…
StayOnTop Shocking iPad App!
Officially released last week, April 1st 2012, the StayOnTop Shocking App can now be downloaded at a nominal price from the Apple iPad App store. The only other thing you’ll need to do, is to order the two heavy-duty plugin cables. These come with special semi-rubberized suction headpads, so you won’t even need any gel.
The Shocking App offers you a very simple, friendly user interface. On the iPad screen, you just preselect your type of depression (“Incidental”, “Bipolar” or “Chronic”). Next you choose your desired shock level (“Moderate”, “Default” or “Extreme”). Then you hit “Go!” Of course the App will give you a loud warning beep if you forgot to properly attach the cables to your head.
The results are immediate and absolutely amazing. Your depression will be completely gone in a flash! But there is even more.
Thanks to the fact that the StayOnTop Shocking App generates electrical microbursts of extremely high voltages, in a few seconds it will also kill your iPad. So it does not just free you of your depression. It will also free you of the burden of your iPad addiction!
Another great feature of the Shocking App is that we minimized the sound nuisance for people near you. It is much less loud than the classic Mobishock. In fact, while you are shocking yourself, your friends will hear only a soft, almost pleasant sound. Click the Play button below to hear the Shocking App in action:
(if the player does not work, install Flash)
Here at StayOnTop, we’re very proud of this remarkable achievement. This is a superb product. We are very happy to serve the depressed community with this state-of-the-art software technology, and to make you really happy, too!
• note: We regret that, due to a patent conflict that keeps lingering on, for the moment the StayOnTop Shocking App does not yet come with any form of warranty.
I’ve decided to open a new category: Q&A (Questions and Answers). Here I will try to answer some of your questions, as brief as possible.
They also remind me of the old philosophers who, in the tradition of 17th century philosopher René Descartes (above), tried to understand and analyze and chart the human body and brain as some kind of complicated machine, with virtual cogs and wheels. Most philosophers have since long abandoned such a limited view, but some psychiatrists still seem to adhere to it.
The most extreme example of Steampunk Psychiatry is of course ECT (electroshock therapy). What this amounts to, it is like taking your grandfather’s broken old pocket watch, and shaking it violently in the hope it will start running again. Actually this can work in a few cases. When I got ECT myself several years ago, perhaps it did help me a little. But it may cause only more damage just as well. (Let me prevent misunderstandings: this image here does not show ECT. It’s more Steampunk…)
This tDCS can be considered a milder, more modern form of ECT. Unlike ECT, it is not based on the effect of electricity-induced convulsions: rather, it uses the effects of electricity itself. It involves stimulating specific parts of the brain with currents that are weak enough to make anesthesia unnecessary. As you can see here, tDCS equipment almost looks like iPod earplugs put in the wrong places. This is Steampunk Psychiatry taken to a new level of hi-tech.
To mention a few. My present network of friends may be too small for my emotional needs. I also face unexpected financial problems (an old mortgage loan I’m saddled with, has suddenly changed into a burden). For practical reasons, I’m also not happy with the place where I live today. And exactly because I had been getting better last year, I’ve now begun to miss the rewarding challenges of the university job I had to give up because of my depressions eight years ago. Also, I’ve still not been able to cut short my smoking habit, even though I know very well (cough, cough) that I really ought to quit smoking. Need I go on?
Other psychiatrists, all those who have locked up themselves in different theoretical cages, often from their own perspectives make the same kind of mistake. The mistake of limitedness. The mistake of not looking beyond their own walls-of-theory, the cells that happen to confine them. This makes them too partial, too one-sided. Seeking the definitive solution in changing external circumstances. Or in adjusting the patient’s habits. In reprogramming emotional reactions. In furthering self-insight. You name it.
What I would like, is for psychiatrists to come out of their limited theoretical cells and for once take a look at the rest of the world. I would like them to stop viewing their otherwise oriented colleagues as marginal idiots, and to finally begin to work all together – systematically – to create a more integrated perspective on fighting depression. To recognize that each one of them, from the Steampunk tinkerer to the Freudian listener to the Socio-counselor to the Mindful type, may be a little bit right. And, sometimes, a little bit wrong.
Someone wanted to know what people can do to care for a family member who is getting ECT treatment (electroconvulsive therapy, electroshocks). Here is a list of things that I think may be important.
ECT will be proposed only if a patient is extremely depressed, and after all other options (therapies, medication) have failed. Unfortunately this often also means that the patient is already in such a bad state, that she may have trouble to make an objective, well-considered decision for or against accepting ECT treatment. She may react in a confused, too-impulsive or too-passive way instead of weighing arguments rationally.
• Because ECT requires full anesthesia plus muscle relaxants every time, it is important that in the day before ECT the patient keeps to the eating-and-drinking restrictions as explained by the therapists.
After ECT, the patient will need several hours to recover. Awakening from the anesthesia will happen within about an hour, but regaining full clarity – and physical stability – can in my own experience take much longer.
• Back at home, make sure the patient gets a healthy mix of rest and stimulating activities. Just what we always need: so in fact, you need to do nothing special.
Some eight or nine years ago, my father died. I cannot recall what illness – apart from old age – caused his death. I believe he was in hospital for a while, but I have no idea when or where or how I last saw him. People tell me I made a fine speech at his funeral service (and how in spite of being a non-believer I managed to touchingly recite a traditional psalm). But I myself do not remember anything of that funeral. Not a thing, not a place, not a face, not a word, not a feeling. I just don’t remember. Nor for that matter do I recall anything of how and where my wife and I first met, or of our wedding day. I don’t really remember the events of the day our daughter was born, or how I used to care for her when she was a child. I had to be told my wife once had a miscarriage: I didn’t remember.
Speaking just for myself, I can only say that my own memory loss is substantial and real. This memory problem became apparent to me four years ago, when I stopped having frequent ECT treatments. At that time, I awoke from a long-term kind of daze induced by the combination of ECT treatments and strong medication cocktails. Regaining some clarity of mind meant I also became more acutely aware of my memory loss. Over the last four years this has remained a serious problem – my memory seems like a harddisk where some of the folders have simply been wiped. Viewing an old photo and still not being able to remember or recognize its context: a File Not Found effect.
I do not belong to the group of ECT opponents who simply reject ECT under all circumstances. I am willing to accept the possibility that perhaps it may work as a kind of last-resort therapy, in suicidal depression cases where all other therapies failed. But I would certainly like to see better, more thorough research. In the meantime, for myself I am not in a position to judge whether all those electroshocks have really saved me. Maybe they did – or maybe refusing ECT would in the end have made little or no difference. Who knows? Who can tell? Not me. For some specific kinds of medication I can estimate how the price to pay (such as loss of concentration) relates to the result. But I still do not know if the price I may have paid for my ECT treatments (this long-lasting, serious, sometimes crippling loss of personal memories) was in fact worth the result.
The hospital where I got most of my electroshocks was a large one. To get me from the psychiatry ward to the surgery unit, I had to be wheeled through various long corridors, crowded halls and into elevators. Rolling along in my hospital bed, I always felt a bit like a fraud. For if I hadn’t been in my underwear and without shoes, I would have been perfectly capable of walking myself. Being wheeled in a bed is strange anyway because even when you sit up in the bed, your head is below the level of other people’s heads. Like in the photo here, this low position temporarily returns you to a child’s perspective. And of course in your bed you are fully dependent on the maneuvering skills of whoever is pulling or pushing.
In 1938 he felt sure enough to try this electroshock method for the first time with a human guinea pig. This first electroshock patient was a schizophrenic vagrant who had been picked up in a confused, incoherent, hallucinating state by the police at a Rome railroad station. No one knew what to do with him, so Cerletti got the opportunity to try something new. After a few first tries where the voltage turned out to be too low, Cerletti got it right and managed to induce the convulsions he wanted: “A 110 volt discharge was sent through for 0.5 second. The immediate, very brief cramping of all the muscles was again seen; after a slight pause, the most typical epileptic fit began to take place.”
May 22, 1859 –
