Almost exactly one year ago, my wife Ginger and I, and a number of friends and colleagues, began to form the Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education & Living. We also began to plan its first annual Empathic Therapy Conference, scheduled to take place shortly on April 8-10, 2011 in Syracuse, New York.

On Saturday morning April 9th of this year, a panel discussion will be held for the public and professionals on the theme of “Psychiatric Drug Tragedies: Personal, Legal and Medical Perspectives.”

It’s part biological and part psychological and spiritual. But there’s no doubt about the direction that humankind must go in—toward empathic individual relationships and ultimately a more empathic culture. Until human beings truly learn to love and to understand one another, and to adopt empathic attitudes and practices, the world will remain mired in misery and conflict. Until those of us in the healing arts come to this realization we will often do more harm than good, and never fulfill our potential to give and to heal.

With advice and guidance from 20 advisory council members of the Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education and Living, I have formulated 15 guidelines for empathic therapy. Advisory council members include psychiatrists, neurologists, addiction specialists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, educators and advocates.

Friday afternoon, January 28, 2011: The FDA’s panel for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) voted to place ECT machines in Category III for all but one indication. If the FDA accepts the panel’s recommendation, the agency will require testing for all uses except “catatonia” which was recommended for Category II, requiring less stringent testing.

Duff Wilson provided a service by presenting both sides of the controversy when he wrote his report “F.D.A. Is Studying the Risk of Electroshock Devices” in the January 24, 2011 New York Times. The FDA is proposing to move ECT from the high risk category to the medium risk category to avoid the necessity of any testing for safety or efficacy. As a result, ECT would be grandfathered into continued use without ever being tested. This would place ECT in the same category as syringes which no longer need proof of safety or efficacy. The FDA hearings will be held January 27-28, 2011, and I hope some of my more courageous colleagues will attend and testify against approving ECT without testing.

For decades the FDA has allowed electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to be used without requiring any proof of safety or efficacy. The machines and the treatment have been “grandfathered” into use rather than tested. A few years ago the FDA proposed to test the treatment but heavy pressure from the American Psychiatric Association caused the agency to reverse itself. ECT remains untested and widely used. Imagine that — the American Psychiatric Association doesn’t want an obviously dangerous treatment to be tested at all. It just wants psychiatrists left alone to inflict it upon hapless patients.

Want to be helpful to almost anyone under almost any circumstances? Want to be a better friend, husband or wife, doctor or teacher, therapist or police officer?Maybe you just want to make this holiday season as pleasant as possible for everyone around you. Almost every kind of help begins with building a positive relationship. And for many kinds of help, a good relationship is the single most helpful thing you can offer. But what makes for a positive or good relationship?

Every society has found its own methods to abuse its most vulnerable members: children; women; the elderly; ethnic, racial and religious minorities; the poor; the mentally distressed or distressing; the physically disabled; those with unconventional lifestyles. All of these have been widely abused and all remain victims of abuse to varying degrees in societies throughout the world.

Remember not so long ago when Prozac became the world’s largest selling medication of any kind, and then for years how Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft took over many of the top 10 spots? Remember the explanations at the time—that they were wonder drugs and that 15-50 percent or more of Americans would need them some time in their lives? To many people this seemed like a scientific breakthrough when in reality it was … a triumph of marketing. Some studies suggest that the antidepressants are little or no more effective than a sugar pill and a lot more dangerous. Recent research examined all antidepressant studies submitted in recent years to FDA in regard to antidepressant efficacy and found that the drug performed no better than placebo except in “severely depressed patients,” reaching “clinical significance” only “at the upper end of the very severely depressed category.” Even then, the difference between the antidepressant and the placebo was “relatively small.”