Has anyone or does anyone know someone who had Electro Shock Therapy?!
Question: What was your experience? Did it work?
Answers: What was your experience? Did it work?
I've been with some patients to ECT and I can say that it helped some of them. ECT is used when you are so depressed that almost every function in you has more or less stopped working; you don't eat, sleep or speak. For about 60-70 years ago many mental ill patients got "catatonic" and it means that processes in your body and mind are stopped. This is a very dangerous state because it affects everything, almost into cell level. Luckily, catatonia is not common today thanks to better treatments and better understanding about mental illness.
ECT is a good alternative and not dangerous. The technique is very advanced and the patient gets anaesthesia ( narcosis ) before the treatment. It looks like a small cramp or convulsion, like a minor epilepsy convulsion. The treatment itself takes about 10 to 30 sec. When the patient wakes up he/she will have some memory gaps from the time just before the anaesthesia but it will recover after a day or two. It's all about electricity and the brain also work with electricity when it sends signals to the muscels.
ECT today is something completely different from before. Maybe we have pictures in our minds of big machines and patients who almost being thrown from the treatment table because of the strong electricity pulse. That picture hasn't anything to do with reality today.
ECT has been gone for a time as a treatment alternative but it is coming up again. I can't see why ECT should be worse than chemical treatment like anti-depressant, but it has to be used only in very alarming cases.
My Grandma had it done after she had a nervous break-down and it didn't help. She couldn't remember any of us, then one day a family friend walked in and she asked her "where the hell have I been?" and everything just came back to her. I don't know how good it is for the body even though times have changed and techniques have advanced. I personally wouldn't want it. Best of luck.
My brother had electric shock therapy (ECT) and it brought him back from a very strange place because we found him talking to invisible people. It was quite frightening to watch.
Long term though and thinking back to the time he had it which would be around 1962, I can remember my parents being very annoyed about it. They had not been asked to sign for this therapy and whether he did or not I don't know - but if he did, this was ridiculous because he was mentally incapable.
My parents have now passed on God bless them and my brother is in a residential home. He still talks about voices in his head and I tell him they are not voices they are his own thoughts. I find him very trying at times but he is in a good place, his home I mean, so I am relieved about that.
my mum has had it done a couple of times cause she has severe mental health problems like schezaphinia [sorry not good at spelling} is has helped her in the past and she has to have alot of medication to take aswell. i have mental health problems aswell includeing epilepsy which isnt well controlled at the moment. and iv been told i might have to have it done to control my anxiety disorder or possibly brain surgery for my epilepsy
I was in the hospital for depression and they gave me ECTs I don't remember signing for it but with the way it messed up my memory I demanded they be stopped. It took along time to recover from them and I don't think half the people who get it should have it!
I know someone with severe schizophrenia. She has had several rounds of ECT. It didn't help. She still hears voices and is currently in a group home.
She still takes a lot of medication, too, but nothing helps.
I received more than 10 sessions of ECT and while it did not help me, the medical community feels that it is one of the most effective treatments -- at least for depression.
I have to disagree with Carina, tho. There are some side effects, like memory loss, that can continue to occur long after the ECT sessions themselves, and I often find that as distressing as the depression episodes.