Today we return to my 3 New Things series so I can touch on three new pieces of information I’ve found this week. This week I talk about:
Last week I didn’t post three new things but don’t take that to mean I wasn’t learning because I certain was, and always am. For this week I have these three new pieces of information to share:
Thanks for everyone who took the time to read my electroconvulsive therapy primer and the Badger’s personal experience of ECT. Most people were really respectful in their opinions and asked great questions. As per the usual, however, electroconvulsive therapy is a controversial, contentious and polarizing topic that brings out people’s abusive side pretty quickly.
My goal in having a personal ECT experience shared here is to provide the perspective that many people silently have – ECT works, it works quickly, and it works with few side effects. (That’s few, not none.) This is not to say this is everyone’s experience, because it certainly isn’t, but statistically speaking, most (more than half of) people have a positive response to ECT.
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I was 9-years-old in 1975 when One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest came out. I remember watching it on our floral, pleather sofa, late one night on TV. It scared the crap out of me; this was the first time in my life I saw E.C.T. (electroconvulsive therapy, previously electroshock therapy or shock therapy) and little could I imagine that one day I would find myself in McMurphy’s position.
In preparation for Steven’s piece, I’ve written this primer.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the second most controversial medical procedure. (Abortion is the first.) Certainly when I write about ECT it seems to prove the controversy of this topic. And it doesn’t matter what I say about ECT, even if it’s not pro or con, people insist on expressing very strong viewpoints on the use of ECT. And yes, I have had ECT.
And generally the strong viewpoints are anti-ECT. They are from the ECT-is-torture crowd. A prevalent crowd online, to be sure, but someone needs to actually talk about the facts of ECT.
Read MoreIt would be nice to know ahead of time, if a treatment would work. Unfortunately, no one cal tell the future: not for cancer treatment and not for mental illness treatment like electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) either.
But very smart people try to figure out what might predict the outcome of treatments. Especially treatments like ECT, a hotly debated, and much maligned treatment. That’s the good news. And the bad news.
In a retrospective chart review of depressive and bipolar patients in a Netherlands hospital, of those who received ECT, 65.8% met the standards for remission. The only predictor of response found was duration of index series.
Read MoreI hadn’t planned on discussing my electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) experience with many people. I found it terrible, scarring, not to mention futile and immensely embarrassing; those aren’t generally feelings I like to talk about. I still find the idea of shock therapy, well, shocking. Incomprehensible. Absolutely impossible.
The problem with being a writer is that you write what you know, and you’re driven to write what plagues you most. At least I am. I can’t write about fluffy bunnies and sparkling rainbows, because these aren’t the things that occupy my conscious mind. But ECT. Ironically it erased pieces of my brain only to seemingly permanently occupy others. I’m acutely aware of its happening and yet find it completely unbelievable.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation May Cause Improvements in Memory – Psychiatric TimesNow, understand that depression impinges on memory function and the correlation below may not be the rTMS improving memory per se but...
Read MoreI frequent poster, Herb, has introduced more information on the rTMS with VNS topic. Some doctors are saying it is possible. Additionally, if you read the whole thread, someone corrects me and notes that MRIs are possible with a...
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