My doctor said he'd gladly do ECT if he needed it. He doesn't believe in needless suffering.

Unbelievable. ECT isn't even humane. What's next to come back, lobotomy?

The part that bugs me about ECT is that psychiatrists don't seem to be able to explain it. I heard things like, "Well, we don't really know why it works...but..." That's not good enough for me. I refused to do it, and boy am I glad.

Psychiatrists can rarely tell a patient why certain meds work (or don't work). The medicating of psychiatric patients in current times can sometimes have effects that can be life and mind altering,left with memory loss, and dulled personalities-- such as the leftover results from ECT. Mainstream vogue: chemical lobotomy. Take your pick, until treatment of mental illness is streamlined, it's an intolerable crapshoot.

Priscilla,

Why isn't ECT humane??? If somone is suffering from severe depression, don't you think that it's actually more inhumane to keep him or her in that state than to do something about it that can dramtically improve the quality of his or her life??

RE: Humane.It isn't humane because it damages the brain.Thats how it works.Brain damage. check out some doctors critical of ECT/EST like http://www.idiom.com/~drjohn/nmsnew.html

My other link was not exactly on.This one is better in explaining the inhumane http://www.idiom.com/~drjohn/amjpsych.html

One of the biggest mistakes I ever made in my adult life was agreeing to have ECT done in December 2002. I had 6 treatments and stopped. On the first treatment, the doctor didn't give me a high enough dose to stop convulsions and when I came to, every muscle in my body hurt and burned. I couldn't walk for over a day. they told me it was nothing, I found out later when I was unconcious your body jerks and the anesesthia is supposed to stop that. The next time I was given the correct amount, but was groggy. I suppose that is better. But I noticed I could not remember anything, I was convinced the President was Bush Sr, and I was living a decade earlier. I couldn't recall any of the Presidents names, and I could not recall any books I have ever read, or TV shows/movies I had seen. Now, let me tell you, I had a photographic memory for every book I had ever read, from '{Pat the Bunny', to the latest Grisham my mother had brought me. All gone. It was like having a stroke or becoming senile. i could not recall what I ate half hour ago, and stared at the same photo in a magazine for most of the day.

I stopped the treatment ehen i thought my iQ had gone down. I could not write, i could not read, i couldn't do anything. it was horrible.

I had the treatment done by the best doctor in the state. I saw it work miracles on several other people, it brought them from catatonia to the land of the living. But in my case, it was horrible. It took almost 4 years for my brain to go back to where it was. I lost my job, and my brain. it wasn']t worth it.

Today I beg people not to have this treatment done. Even as a last resort. I wish i could get to Ms. Dukakkis and tell her about my horror story so her book would be more balanced than by quoting people who had good experiences with it.

I knew someone who did ECT and she forgot that we were friends and treated me like a stranger. She drowned herself a short time later. If anyone does ECT, they ought to keep a journal so they don't lose too much information about themselves.

Bringing together the painful stories here re: ECT, and looping it into the chemical side (meds). My daughter is now very similar to the ECT descriptions. Once a 4.0 student in High School, an avid writer of wonderful stories by age 8, college level reading age by age 8--now, after 11+ medication trials and over-medicated brain on multiple antipsychotics after trying to remove them, (docs increased all doses)she, is now tested at 2nd grade learning capacity.Teachers have commented, that "it is as if she is a stroke victim". I know these are 2 separate treatments, but I stand by my use of the phrase "chemical lobotomy". All the way around, whether by ECT or medications--the loss of a person's mind, and memories are too high of a price, for the search, the quest of mental health.
I appreciate the people who have shared their stories re: ECT. Thank you.

ECT is an expression of contempt for women but feminists ignore it. Christ but it Sucks that there's no discourse on institutionalized psychiatry outside mental health circles.

Science cannot explain the mechanism of how antidepressants work any better than how ECT works. Frankly, we don't know that much about how psychotherapy works either. I saw a pre-release of a study showing ECT impacted memory in the long-term. This didn't surprise me, but the authors included some people who have generally been ECT proponents. Look for them to move to vagus nerve stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and other new and trendy devices, despite the relatively meager evidence to support them.

CL--exactly.