Warning: This may be triggering to some with suicidal tendencies, please read with caution.
Over the years I have become subject to many types of procedures and treatments for my mental health. I had started going to therapy at age 6 (clearly my mom thought there was something wrong with me). There wasn’t a lot of talk then about mental health, but I remember being a sad child, unable to control my emotions. But in the 80s (there is still a hush on the subject) there was little spoken of Bipolar, people looked at you as weak, and annoying, that I couldn’t “just snap out of it.” Sometimes I was horribly depressed, but couldn’t even think of reasons why I was currently upset. Or maybe it was there were too many reasons to think of just one reason, I don’t know. Ether way the pain was always there, for as long as I can remember. At 15 years of age, I was hospitalized for destabilization and diagnosed with manic depression, ADD, anxiety, and Bipolar 1. That’s when they first started me on medication, a giant grey pill called Depakote, which can typically be used for bipolar patients.
I had attempted suicide and been hospitalized a handful of times since then, One time worse than all the others, as I almost bled out to the point of needing a blood transfusion. I also caused nerve damage to both my wrists and hands.
When I woke up, I was in a room filled with doctors, who informed me of the seriousness of the situation. After I received stitches in both arms, I was transferred to the mental health treatment facility where I first heard that doctors were still performing shock therapy. I was assured that the “new age ECT (electro-convulsive therapy) would most certainly cause improvements to my severe manic episodes. Along with changing my medication, of course, they wanted me to do ECT several times a week.
He had apparently been applying these procedures to several cases in the wing that I was in and had seen much improvement. All I could see were empty shells of a person, all in wheelchairs and white bathrobes. Looking wiped out and defeated. But by this point, I was desperate, I felt like I had tried everything and that my behavior had come to such extremes that this one the last-ditch effort to save my life. The doctor explained the procedure, which was much different than how they used to condone them. As he put it, they are much more “humane” than what was once done.
ECT can be traced back to the 1500s when it was first thought to treat mental illness with convulsions. In 1938, a psychiatrist named Lucio Bini and a neurologist named Ugo Cerletti decided to use electricity to induce seizures in comatose patients. While it was thought to be known that seizures treated psychiatric conditions, there was no way of preventing the severe side effects such as bone fracture, joint dislocations, and cognitive impairment.
It wasn’t until the 1950s that ECT was looked at with scientific measures and efficacy by psychiatrist Dr. Max Wink. This was also done with a drug called succinylcholine, a muscle relaxant introduced, and used in combo with an anesthetic during the procedure. This was to both prevent injury and stop the patient from feeling ECT, which can be quite painful.
It wasn’t until the 1960s and 1970s where there it started to grow a concern about the misuse and abuse of ECT treatment. Where it was thought of as more of a means of controlling overcrowded psychiatric facilities. Electro-convulsive therapy is examined as a most debatable procedure in psychiatry, but the National Institute of Mental Health and the American Psychiatric Association still advocate ECT’s therapeutic purposes in certain mental health situations. It is said to have a 60%-70% remission of depression in patients, which far exceeds most treatments out there. But relapse is also high, requiring ongoing treatment, which only does God knows what to your critical thinking and memory.
That being said, I still wanted to know what it was about ECT that helped. Did it change something in the brain? Or just fry it enough to make you seem more “controllable and behaved” to society. The doctor explained that you are first put to sleep, and then they place an instrument in your mouth, so you don’t bite your tongue or choke. Rods are placed on either side of your head and then they electrocute you. Sending an electric current through the brain, causing you to go into a seizure. This is thought to change the chemistry of the brain, alleviating mental illness symptoms. They allow this to prolong for around a minute or two, before stopping the current and then waking you up.
With frightening side effects such as memory loss, loss of cognitive function, muscle soreness, jaw tightness, disorientation, and memory loss…(wait did I say that already…see what I mean) They make claims of its success and yet will only perform these procedures when all other measures such as medication and psychotherapy have failed.
From my personal experience, I remember being rolled into a separate room, from the 10 other “crazy’s” in beds waiting to be electrocuted. I waited nervously next to an elderly couple. The gentleman holding his wife’s hand as she held her head. It only scared me more, was I too going to be wandering these halls for life, always followed by the pain and misery of my disease. Several doctors surround me and ask me to begin counting to 20. Maybe I imagined it, but I see a flash of light, a sharp pain and then it was over. I remember waking up in the recovery room with several other patients, dazed and confused. Scared to death, because I didn’t remember where I was, my whole body ached, and my head pounded. They gave me Vicodin for the pain. I only received a few of those treatments before I started to refuse them.
My confusion and memory loss frightened me, and I worried about what the long-term effects on my brain were. I did seem to notice a little alleviation in my depression symptoms, but certainly not enough to ever do it again. The next few months I don’t remember at all, but I have been told I stayed in a hotel avoiding all people, barely scraping by. When I did crawl out into public talking to me was making no sense whatsoever. Needless, to say I would never do it again. Its been 2 years since then and my memory has never recovered.
I don’t want my own experience to deter anyone from trying ECT though, as for some, the treatment seems all, but hopeful. Anything, even extreme, may be the answer for some, when there is no other hope. My experience is my own and what works for me, may not work for others and vice versa. Like any treatment, I would suggest doing your research and always getting the opinion or several opinions from licensed practitioners. Never give up, keep fighting and pushing towards finding the treatment that is healing to you.
RESOURCES:
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) Tests and Procedures – Tests and Procedures – Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/electroconvulsive-therapy/about/pac-20393894
History of ECT: How the ECT Procedure Developed. https://www.healthyplace.com/depression/ect/history-of-ect-how-the-ect-procedure-developed
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) For Depression https://www.verywellmind.com/ect-for-depression-and-anxiety-379903#:~:text=ECT%20works%20by%20sending%20an%20electric%20current%20through,the%20chemicals%20in%20the%20brain%20related%20to%20mood.