What are your experiences with ECT? (electro-convulsive/electroshock therapy)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been having issues with depression for a little over a decade, and the past handful or so of years, things have been getting much worse. Unfortunately, I’m coming to the end of the line medication-wise and nothing has really worked well enough for me. It’s looking like ECT is the next step, and that makes me quite nervous.

I’ve been doing a bit of research but would really like to hear about some people’s personal experience with it, either through having it yourself or knowing someone who did. Was it painful? Did you/the person who had it suffer memory loss? How extensive? Did it work? Was it worth the risk and results? Anything you would have done differently or that you did do that helped make it a more pleasant/effective experience?

Thank you very much.

2

My mother was in the psyk ward again for MD getting ECT. My brother who I had a very strained relationship and who had not spoken to for years brought her to my wedding reception.

How did that go … well lets see …

My brother apologized for bringing her like a puppy who had been kick a few thousand times. At least 6 of my best friends called my mother a bitch to her face and after. And they where correct.

Over a decade later I refer to this day as “The worst day of my life” ( thanks mom ). I’m still married and my wife doesn’t even blink when I say this.

And here is the kicker.

Mom was ECT’ed the next day and still claims to not remember a thing. She is as crazy hurtful and depressed as ever.

Meflin

PS Bro’s wings he made where the hit of the party!. dam those where good.

3

A good friend with Bipolar Disorder had ECT after all other treatments stopped being effective. It worked well enough to allow other treatments to work and he’s had a much better life since then. He’s been a teacher for the past decade which wouldn’t have been possible.

So it can work, or at least be part of an effective treatment plan.

4

My mom had ECT when I was a junior in high school. She kept forgetting that one of our guinea pigs had died and would get really angry with me for participating in extracurricular activities. Her appointments were early in the morning and my dad would drop me off at school first (I shared a car with my mom, but didn’t have a permit to park at the school) because I had club meetings before class and that really upset her for some reason.

I don’t think the ECT helped a lot- she got worse during my senior year, but my parents were divorcing so maybe that was a contributing factor. Regardless, she remains the only parent I have ever heard of who was angry that her kid did after school stuff and had a job.

ETA: This is purely anecdotal obviously and I don’t want to be negative or discouraging about someone else trying ECT- my mom’s problems are pretty extensive and some of it is just her personality. But she did have memory loss and that may have played a part in why she would get so upset with me for not coming straight home from school or going to school early- I think she didn’t always remember what I was doing and would jump to conclusions that I was doing something “bad.”

5

Thank you for sharing, everyone. I’m sorry your moms have had such serious problems, **CatherineZeta **and melfin, and I’m so glad it worked so well for your friend, Telemark.

Memory loss is one of my biggest worries. I read it can extend to a few months before and after treatment at worst, so I’m thinking if I have it done, I’ll write myself a little summary of all the important things that have happened in the months before I have it done, and keep a notebook where I can write things down that I need to remember afterwards. (And then tell everyone in my life to tell me to consult my notebook, because I can completely see myself forgetting to do that.) I imagine that would be overkill on my part, but it would ease my mind a little, so it’d be worth it.

I’m also a little worried about saying something embarrassing during the period of confusion after treatment, but hopefully if that does happen, it’ll just be funny embarrassing.

6

Used to be a PACU (recovery room) RN, and took care of patients after ECT. In any decent place they get full anesthesia, and it’s a remarkably peaceful process. It certainly seems to help some people who can’t tolerate the side effects of the meds. Some people it seems to do nothing at all. I’ve seen people come through a course of it make dramatic recoveries - in the short time I met them.

7

I have no experience (neither 1st-hand nor 2nd-hand), but from stuff I’ve read, I’ll add another question to the discussion that nobody’s mentioned yet: Whatever the beneficial effect may be, how long does it last? From what I’ve read, the beneficial effect tends to wear off after some period of time. (Months?)

Anyone with any experience (1st or 2nd hand) on that point? If so, then taking that along with side effects into consideration, is ECT still valuable?

Interesting idea. Make an external full back-up of your brain. (Valuable in case of zombie attack too. :stuck_out_tongue: ) Have you read Sirens of Titan by Vonnegut? The principal character had his memory completely erased repeatedly, as part of his indoctrination into the Martian Army. He did exactly that: Recorded (made an audio recording) of a few basic facts he thought he would need; reviewed same afterward; and thus repeatedly thwarted the attempts to turn him into the perfect Martian Army Zombie.

8

My wife suffered from depression for quite a few years and when misdiagnosed as bi-polar, underwent extensive ECT. Nothing helped until the proper diagnosis some years later. She seems to have some memory loss from that time, as well as some anger over the treatments that were not for her situation.

I think if she was bi-polar and the treatments helped, she would have gotten far fewer and not experienced as much memory loss.

9

I apologize in advance for the length. TL/DR version: ECT was a terrible experience for me.

I have treatment-resistant depression and have been in a major depressive episode since the early 1990s. After several years and no luck with multiple medications, my psychiatrist suggested ECT. I underwent a dozen sessions almost 20 years ago. Understand that the following is based upon my experience. There are a lot of people who have had different outcomes. I am also not a doctor, of course.

I received the treatments every other day for a month. I have no recollection of pain from the actual ECT. At that time they used a general anesthetic and medications to prevent the muscle contractions caused by the treatments. I’m not sure what they do now, but I know they don’t just shove a stick between your teeth and shock away like they did to my father in the '50s. I have no memory at all of the treatments or the time immediately following the treatments. I gradually “came to” about a month after the last treatment. Apparently I was a happy lunatic during those missing weeks. I actually ordered a set of CDs from Time-Life, something I would never do while sane :D. I was a smoker then and my sofa was covered with burn marks. I basically felt stoned for a while.

I attempted to go back to my job—the best job I ever had or ever hoped to have, BTW—but I could not remember the names of my coworkers, could not recall how to perform many of the functions of my job, and could not follow necessary instructions or procedures. I was forced to resign (not by my employers, who had always been supportive, but by my own conscience). Assorted short-term menial jobs, nervous breakdowns, bankruptcies and a suicide attempt followed. I’m very lucky; my husband actually meant the “in sickness and in health” bit.

Any improvement in my underlying depression disappeared shortly after that first month of goofiness. Over the intervening years I’ve been on a multitude of medications and spent innumerable hours in counseling. I was able to work again for a few years after intensive CBT, but between industry changes and the difficulty with memory and attention that resulted from the ECT I am once again unable to work. I will most likely remain so for the rest of my life.

Ultimately, ECT was a disastrous experience for me. Of all the terrible choices I’ve made in my life, that was the most terrible. My husband agrees. I recognize that it does help some people, but I could never recommend it to anyone because the consequences I’ve experienced are so crippling. My advice to you would be to
[ul]
[li]Have the clinician who has known you the longest and knows you the best help you make the decision, not a practitioner you see only rarely. My treatments were prescribed by a psychiatrist with proper training and certifications, but his experience with me was limited to 20-minute sessions every few months for medication checks. He didn’t know, for instance, that my near-photographic memory was an essential component in my job performance. He hadn’t discovered the significant anxiety and panic issues that were at the root of my depression. He was treating the DSM code, not the person.[/li][li]Consider the worst-case effects of ECT when you make your decision. Would you be able to live with a significant decrease in short-term memory? Would it be a horrific embarrassment to you to encounter a person in a public place and not recall that you had met that person before or even considered them an acquaintance? Is there enough flexibility in your life that screwing up on multi-step tasks like cooking from a recipe or accomplishing tasks in a certain order won’t have catastrophic results? Don’t just look at published research and think you’ll be one of the 90% (or whatever, just pulled that number out of the air) who does not have lasting negative effects. Consider whether you’ll be able to stand it if you are among the 10% like me.[/li][li]Think about whether you’ve actually tried every less dangerous option. Have you tried atypical adjunct medications like Abilify or Lamictal or Provigil? Do you have vitamin deficiencies, thyroid issues, or nutritional issues? I’ve gotten to the point where even surgery has seemed like a reasonable risk, but when I get a chance to breathe and step back I know I’d really miss that frontal lobe. I am now in the furthest reaches of desperation treating my own illness, and I might have to give in and try daily exercise and a healthy diet ;). I understand that it’s really hard to pull off major lifestyle changes when you’re depressed, but think how much harder it would be if you could never remember where you put your running shoes, or if you missed your gym appointment because the part of your brain holding the fact that you joined a gym suddenly became inaccessible.[/li][li]If you decide to go for it, make sure that you have proper supervision for a month after the treatments. I just ended up with “Time-Life Brings You Music of the Sixties and Seventies” and some damaged upholstery. I could have burned the house down or used our life savings to buy a herd of wildebeest.[/li][/ul]

Whatever you decide, best of luck to you.

10

I have a (legitimately) bi-polar friend who was suffering from severe depression one winter and therefore underwent ECT. Unfortunately the doctor in charge was experimenting with the idea of doing many more treatments than ordinary. I am not sure of the numbers but my friend had 2 to 3 times the normal number of sessions.

After each session, he was extremely disoriented, with massive memory problems. His SO had to reorientate him to the house and pretty much everything, each time. It was extremely stressful for her.

It did cure the depression but he came out the other side a changed person. He cannot remember whole chunks of his life. Early memories are still there but apparently there are many years missing of more recent times. His short term memory is also extremely poor but he is on so many industrial strength drugs (because he does not respond to normal bi-polar treatments) that it is hard to tell if it is due to the ECT or not. Also some lifelong preferences for things like food changed, as if he was a new person.

The most tragic thing, is that only his SO remembers many of the intimacies that they shared over the course of 30+ years together. For him, these precious moments never occurred.

11

There is evidence that ECT works by damaging the brain, causing short-term euphoria and memory loss that ranges from short-term to permanent. It also tends to permanently flatten your ability to feel anything at all.

At best, it’s a procedure in which they’re offering to run electricity through your brain, they have no proposed mechanism or explanation for why it should work, just their claim that it might.

Be aware also that ECT is generally not a single instance in which they electroshock your brain. It’s a series. Thirty to fifty is typical.

Google “Linda Andre”. You should read the personal experiences of people who’ve had it done to them.

12

This too is gonna be a long post. Sorry :smiley:

I had a series of ECT treatments in 2000, twelve years ago. Prior to that I had tried various medications and psychotherapy treatments, but the intractable depression remained. I had done a few stints in psychiatric wards, as well as a serious suicide attempt. I had requested ECT on a number of occasions but it was refused. At the time I was also a sole parent to four teenagers. Not a particularly happy camper you might say. Finally, my condition was considered serious enough for ECT to be approved.

My memory is certainly a bit fuzzy in the weeks prior to and following the treatments, but I believe I had 12 sessions over a period of two weeks. I was given a very light general anaesthetic so remember nothing of the procedures, and returned to my room within 1/2 hr. One time I woke with wet pants: I’d peed myself under the treatment. Nobody warned me that this might be a possibility, so I made sure to wear a pad for future sessions…as it turned out, I didn’t need them. I recall having a nasty headache after one of the sessions, but again, that was not repeated in later ones.

I returned home the day after the final treatment still feeling like shit. Weeks passed, and a new psychiatrist recommended yet another anti-depressant thinking that the ECT had failed me too. Within a couple of days I was as high as a kite…I’ve never been diagnosed as bipolar, but from my understanding I was certainly in an incredible manic phase. Now whether it was the effects of the ECT finally cutting in, or a combination of that and the new meds, I don’t know. I stayed on the meds for just two weeks feeling so grandiose and invincible it was dangerous. Fun, but dangerous. At least I had the presence of mind to quit the meds.

So that was 12 years ago, and I have not experienced any depression whatsoever since. But like AHunter3 mentions, I don’t feel much of anything at all. Lows and highs are absent. It has given me more control over my then out-of-control life, but maybe it has come at a cost.

To give an example, a few months ago I attended the birth of my second grandson born via caesarean. As he emerged, the tears flowed from my eyes, the smile on my face was cheshire-like, but I didn’t ‘feel’ anything much. It’s like my physical body knows how to react to certain situations (happy, sad etc) but my actual emotions are disconnected from that. So, from all appearances I am a normal, functioning adult human being who loves her family and friends, works full-time, and lives reasonably well, but there’s certainly something missing.

Now whether this can be attributed to the ECT, I really don’t know. Nor do I know what my life would have been like had I *not *undergone the treatments…I suspect it might well have been more chaotic, perhaps I might have succeeded in an attempt on my life. All I know is that this is my life now, I’m contented and boringly predictable.

And that’s OK for me. Sometimes I wish I could really get swallowed up in joy, or grief as the case may be. Really FEEL it right down to my bones…but then I remember what sort of a nutjob I was when I was depressed when my feelings were all over the shop anyway, and didn’t correspond to the occasion either. For me, this is liveable.