Out of the Shadows by Mark Litzsinger

Author:Mark Litzsinger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Out of the Shadows: Revealing the Path to Recovery
ISBN: 9780998020419
Publisher: RML Press
Published: 2017-11-04T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Electroconvulsive Therapy Treatment and Depression

“Mark’s electroconvulsive therapy treatments were the best thing in the world for him. While he didn’t show improvement immediately, as he continued the course of the treatments, he gradually moved out of the deep depression.”

—Robin Litzsinger, my sister

SHOCK TREATMENT, OR ECT, HAS BEEN A HIGHLY CONTROVERSIAL form of treatment for depression ever since it was first developed in 1938. It involves sending an electrical current through a patient’s brain that is powerful enough to cause a convulsion similar to an epileptic seizure. In the process, the brain’s chemistry undergoes changes that relieve the patient’s depression. Because of the success rate of shock treatment for people suffering from the most severe cases of depression, doctors continue to proscribe its use today. “The modern version of ECT, far from outmoded, is the most effective therapy available for severe, treatment-resistant depression and bipolar disorder (and even sometimes, when deployed early enough, schizophrenia).”235

In part, the controversy and fear surrounding ECT has been fueled by its depiction on the silver screen in movies such as The Snake Pit (1948), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Frances (1982), and Shine (1996). Some patients who underwent shock treatment in these movies—and in real-life examples of early ECT—experienced significant side effects such as confusion, memory loss, heart problems, and broken bones. “There is no treatment in psychiatry more frightening than electroconvulsive therapy. … There is also no treatment in psychiatry more effective than ECT.”236

During the early years of its history, shock treatment was administered with little regard for the patient’s well-being. For example, ECT was often given to patients without anesthesia; patients today are anesthetized to prevent them from injuring themselves during muscle spasms caused by seizures. Also, doctors or medical staff didn’t carefully monitor shock treatments to ensure electrical dosages were precise and didn’t check patients’ vital signs frequently during the procedure.

Those oversights meant ECT posed a greater risk to patients in the past than it does today. However, the memory of these risks and side effects contribute to the controversy surrounding shock therapy as a depression treatment today, with better results from more targeted procedures. “A procedure pioneered in the 1930s that seemed on the verge of extinction just a generation ago is being performed today at medical centers large and small. … Madness no more, electric shock is quietly being resurrected as a restorative wonder that someday could rank right up there with penicillin and Prozac. … How one of the most reviled psychiatric procedures is fast becoming one of its mainstays is … a narrative that begins with an epidemic of mental illness that has stubbornly resisted a cure, and a handful of doctors who have equally stubbornly refused to give up on a remedy that most had banished as barbaric.”237

A VIABLE OPTION FOR SEVERE CASES OF DEPRESSION

Patients usually pursue ECT only when they suffer from severe depression and haven’t found enough relief from other forms of treatment. In particular, two types of patients tend to use shock

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.