Psycho-Babble Medication | about biological treatments | Framed
This thread | Show all | Post follow-up | Start new thread | List of forums | Search | FAQ

Re: Think You Wanna Do ECT? » SalArmy4me

Posted by Adam on August 23, 2001, at 13:23:14

In reply to Think You Wanna Do ECT?, posted by SalArmy4me on August 23, 2001, at 8:04:38

I'm not sure what this thread is about, but I'm giving maintainance ECT some serious thought, since I stopped taking selegiline about a week ago. I have, since then, felt unexpectedly wonderful. I liked selegiline a lot, and may go back to it, but I realise I am currently enjoying some residual antidepressant effects without having an antidepressant drug in my system. I have started to feel tired at midnight. I have had dreams (in one I was dreaming of my girlfriend...when I woke up, there she was...I wouldn't trade that moment for any amount of money), which I essentially stopped doing on selegiline without sedating myself with an antihistamine. I've lost the jitters, and the scattered thinking.

I've had this kind of feeling once before, about a week after having a standard course of ECT. If I hadn't been in such a weird place (literally and figuratively) at that time, I think I would have been nearly euphoric.

ECT has been around since the 1930s. It has evolved considerably since the days when people were held down by orderlies and the seizures broke bones. It's not perfect, but neither are drugs. Most of the risks are associated with the anesthesia, and are nearly always a manifestation of that in combination with an underlying physical problem (cardiovascular, usually). Not for want of looking, no one has been able to demonstrate convincingly that people who recieve ECT, either acutely or chronically, suffer ANY sequellae due to the seizures, and retrograde amnesia is the only significant side effect anyone has been able to report definitely, that usually being limited to the day/course of the procedure. Patient complaints of cognative deficits caused by ECT must be contrasted with controled studies where, following efficaceous ECT, every cognative function tested was unchanged or improved over placebo. Given the elaborate and highly-ritualized nature of the ECT procecdure, the placebo effect one ought to see in a controled study should be quite powerful. That it has been shown, then, to be a potent antidepressant, and safe in every thoroughly studied aspect, makes it tempting to regard much of the anti-ECT sentiment out there as specious and/or spurious.

(Disclaimer - Shortly after recieving ECT I had my own doubts too, despite my own success with it, because I felt so disoriented afterward, and because the effect didn't last. None of this should have been suprising, really, given the terrible shape I was in by the time I checked into the hospital. Since then the science, not the unsubstantiated suspicions, have swayed me. Hopefully someday people will pay more attention to real science than scientologists, and see ECT for what it is: A safe, efficacious, and nearly side-effect-free antidepressant therapy with a terribly unjustified reputation.)


Share
Tweet  

Thread

 

Post a new follow-up

Your message only Include above post


Notify the administrators

They will then review this post with the posting guidelines in mind.

To contact them about something other than this post, please use this form instead.

 

Start a new thread

 
Google
dr-bob.org www
Search options and examples
[amazon] for
in

This thread | Show all | Post follow-up | Start new thread | FAQ
Psycho-Babble Medication | Framed

poster:Adam thread:76099
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010822/msgs/76146.html