Electric shock treatment

[mortuarymary]

Anyone on here or know anything about electric shock treatment to the brain for bipolar etc.

 

[divinemistress36]

ECT gave me a lot of memory loss . Only do it as a last resort

 

[BrainShower]

I have talked to folks who had success with it, and to folks who felt like it ruined their lives.
I don't have a strong opinion on it, but it seems prudent to be at least cautious if not wary.

 

[Skallagrim]

It's brute-force medical intervention. Electrodes on the head, pushing quite a big electric current through your nervous system (which is very electrical in nature). That alters your brain and stimulates your neural network. Whether those alterations are positive or negative? I don't think it's possible to predict.

 

[leavingthesoultrap]

Yes. My grandfather got that years ago for bipolar. He was never the same afterwards according to my mom. And not in a good way

 

[mortuarymary]

ECT gave me a lot of memory loss . Only do it as a last resort

But did it make you feel better? Less sucicidal

 

[divinemistress36]

But did it make you feel better? Less sucicidal

It did . I wouldn't do it again though

 

[Guy Smiley]

Anyone on here or know anything about electric shock treatment to the brain for bipolar etc.

I'm not bipolar, but I had ECT for depression last year. This is probably way more info than you wanted to know, but here's what I know about ECT and my personal experience with it:

I had three sessions per week for one month, for a total of twelve sessions (this is called the intensive phase). During this time, my short-term memory became really bad, which is a very common side-effect. It was weird and quite unpleasant, but it was only temporary and my memory quickly returned to normal after I was done with the treatment.

After the intensive phase, you're supposed to have several "taper" sessions (e.g. two per a week for a couple weeks and then one per week for a couple weeks) but, against the doctors' recommendations, I decided not to because I wasn't feeling that much better and thus thought it wasn't really working. But about two weeks after my last session, I started feeling significantly better, and then even better after a couple more weeks had passed. Some people start to feel better during the course of the treatment, while others (like myself) only start to feel better afterwards.

I actually got to the point where I was feeling pretty good and stopped thinking about suicide. I was being way more social. I joined a gym and started exercising for the first time in decades. I was eating healthy and just taking much better care of myself in general. Unfortunately, this all only lasted for a couple more months and then I started slowly regressing. About four months after my treatment ended, I was back to being very depressed and suicidal.

Had I tapered the treatment at the end like one is supposed to, I very likely would have continued feeling better for longer than I did. How much longer? It could have been weeks or it could have been months. It's impossible to know for sure. Some people feel better for many years, even decades sometimes. For other people, in order to maintain the effects, they will need to have ongoing maintenance treatments. Maintenance treatments can range anywhere from a couple sessions a month to a few times a year (and the side-effects are not nearly as bad when the sessions are this infrequent).

So, why don't I go back and do ECT again and this time do the taper sessions and maybe also maintenance sessions? Well, perhaps I'm being foolish, but I'm just very pessimistic that it would help me in the long-term. I believe that, although I would probably get short-term relief again, and maybe for significantly longer this time, I would inevitably become depressed and suicidal again at some point and no amount of ECT would prevent that. I really don't want to live the remainder of my life going through ups and downs, always waiting for and fearing the return of my depression.

That being said, I want to make it clear that I believe this would be the case for me (due to my own particular life circumstances, realities, situation etc) and definitely not necessarily for other people. I do believe that some people really can and do get very significant, long-term relief from their depression (and bipolar, too) from ECT. So, I would actually encourage anyone who has not had success treating their mental depression or bipolar with other types of treatments (meds, therapy, etc) to give ECT a try if you can. It can be done on an out-patient basis (that's how I did it), so you don't need to be hospitalized in order to receive it.

TL/DR: ECT does really work for some people.

 

[mortuarymary]

I'm not bipolar, but I had ECT for depression last year. This is probably way more info than you wanted to know, but here's what I know about ECT and my personal experience with it:

I had three sessions per week for one month, for a total of twelve sessions (this is called the intensive phase). During this time, my short-term memory became really bad, which is a very common side-effect. It was weird and quite unpleasant, but it was only temporary and my memory quickly returned to normal after I was done with the treatment.

After the intensive phase, you're supposed to have several "taper" sessions (e.g. two per a week for a couple weeks and then one per week for a couple weeks) but, against the doctors' recommendations, I decided not to because I wasn't feeling that much better and thus thought it wasn't really working. But about two weeks after my last session, I started feeling significantly better, and then even better after a couple more weeks had passed. Some people start to feel better during the course of the treatment, while others (like myself) only start to feel better afterwards.

I actually got to the point where I was feeling pretty good and stopped thinking about suicide. I was being way more social. I joined a gym and started exercising for the first time in decades. I was eating healthy and just taking much better care of myself in general. Unfortunately, this all only lasted for a couple more months and then I started slowly regressing. About four months after my treatment ended, I was back to being very depressed and suicidal.

Had I tapered the treatment at the end like one is supposed to, I very likely would have continued feeling better for longer than I did. How much longer? It could have been weeks or it could have been months. It's impossible to know for sure. Some people feel better for many years, even decades sometimes. For other people, in order to maintain the effects, they will need to have ongoing maintenance treatments. Maintenance treatments can range anywhere from a couple sessions a month to a few times a year (and the side-effects are not nearly as bad when the sessions are this infrequent).

So, why don't I go back and do ECT again and this time do the taper sessions and maybe also maintenance sessions? Well, perhaps I'm being foolish, but I'm just very pessimistic that it would help me in the long-term. I believe that, although I would probably get short-term relief again, and maybe for significantly longer this time, I would inevitably become depressed and suicidal again at some point and no amount of ECT would prevent that. I really don't want to live the remainder of my life going through ups and downs, always waiting for and fearing the return of my depression.

That being said, I want to make it clear that I believe this would be the case for me (due to my own particular life circumstances, realities, situation etc) and definitely not necessarily for other people. I do believe that some people really can and do get very significant, long-term relief from their depression (and bipolar, too) from ECT. So, I would actually encourage anyone who has not had success treating their mental depression or bipolar with other types of treatments (meds, therapy, etc) to give ECT a try if you can. It can be done on an out-patient basis (that's how I did it), so you don't need to be hospitalized in order to receive it.

TL/DR: ECT does really work for some people.

Thank you so much for that.
It's been offered to me. My only worry is memory loss.
does it hurt?

 

[Guy Smiley]

Thank you so much for that.
It's been offered to me. My only worry is memory loss.
does it hurt?

Sure, happy to help.

The memory loss is the worst part of ECT, but fortunately it is only temporary. Your memory will return to normal very soon after you're done with the treatments. So, if your treatment protocol is similar to the one I had, expect to have some short-term memory problems for about six to eight weeks. The first four weeks are the intensive phase where you have three sessions per week, and the fifth and sixth weeks are the start of the taper phase and will entail two sessions per week. The seventh and eight weeks will be the end of the taper phase and entail only one session per week, but your memory should already begin to return to normal because having only one session per week will have much less of an effect on your memory. So by week nine your memory should be back to normal.

I should also note that there are different places on the head where the two electrodes can be placed, and there are a couple placements options that cause less memory loss. Your doctors will probably start out with a placement that is known to cause less amount of memory problems. If you/they see improvement in your mood / mental state after the first few sessions, then they will very likely stick with that particular placement. If you/they don't see any improvement, then they will very likely switch to a different placement in the hopes that it is more effective, even if it might cause more memory problems then the first placement they tried (this is what happened with me).

As far as physical pain or discomfort, there is unfortunately a general perception among the uninformed public that it is painful. This is in part due to the inaccurate portrayals of ECT in some Hollywood movies (e.g. One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest). But fortunately, the reality is that there is no pain involved. You're given a general anesthesia before the start of each session, so you are not conscious while receiving the ECT. When the anesthesia wears off and you wake up, you feel like normal except for some tiredness and grogginess (which is more due to the anesthesia than the ECT itself). The only unpleasant thing you might feel upon waking is some confusion at first due to the memory loss. But for me there were only a couple times when I woke up and felt confused, and within seconds I remembered exactly where I was and why. You might feel a little foggy and in a bit of a daze for a couple hours, but that subsides and should be gone by later in the day.

Another thing I should mention is that, at least in the USA, you're not supposed to drive if you're having two or more ECT session per week. It's not illegal to drive while undergoing ECT treatment, but (in the USA) your doctors will tell you not to and will insist that someone drive you to and from the hospital for each of your sessions. This is mainly because, if someone receiving ECT were to get into a car crash, that person could claim that the cognitive side-effects of ECT are what caused them to crash, and they could potentially sue the doctors and hospital.

I'm not very familiar with ECT for bipolar disorder, but for severe depression it is very effective. It has a higher success rate ("success" meaning that the patient receives either complete remission from depression or at least a significant reduction in it) than any other form of therapy/treatment. So, if it's anywhere even close to as effective for bipolor disorder and it's available to you, I personally would strongly recommend you try it.

Let me know if you have any more questions or concerns. Best of luck to you with whatever you decide to do.

 

[Buildingsandcastles]

But did it make you feel better? Less sucicidal

It didn't make me less suicidal, just messed up my cognitive functions and made me so dumb that I barely have the capacity to follow a recipe I used to make let alone a complex ctb or other daily tasks.

Sure, happy to help.

The memory loss is the worst part of ECT, but fortunately it is only temporary. Your memory will return to normal very soon after you're done with the treatments. So, if your treatment protocol is similar to the one I had, expect to have some short-term memory problems for about six to eight weeks. The first four weeks are the intensive phase where you have three sessions per week, and the fifth and sixth weeks are the start of the taper phase and will entail two sessions per week. The seventh and eight weeks will be the end of the taper phase and entail only one session per week, but your memory should already begin to return to normal because having only one session per week will have much less of an effect on your memory. So by week nine your memory should be back to normal.

I should also note that there are different places on the head where the two electrodes can be placed, and there are a couple placements options that cause less memory loss. Your doctors will probably start out with a placement that is known to cause less amount of memory problems. If you/they see improvement in your mood / mental state after the first few sessions, then they will very likely stick with that particular placement. If you/they don't see any improvement, then they will very likely switch to a different placement in the hopes that it is more effective, even if it might cause more memory problems then the first placement they tried (this is what happened with me).

As far as physical pain or discomfort, there is unfortunately a general perception among the uninformed public that it is painful. This is in part due to the inaccurate portrayals of ECT in some Hollywood movies (e.g. One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest). But fortunately, the reality is that there is no pain involved. You're given a general anesthesia before the start of each session, so you are not conscious while receiving the ECT. When the anesthesia wears off and you wake up, you feel like normal except for some tiredness and grogginess (which is more due to the anesthesia than the ECT itself). The only unpleasant thing you might feel upon waking is some confusion at first due to the memory loss. But for me there were only a couple times when I woke up and felt confused, and within seconds I remembered exactly where I was and why. You might feel a little foggy and in a bit of a daze for a couple hours, but that subsides and should be gone by later in the day.

Another thing I should mention is that, at least in the USA, you're not supposed to drive if you're having two or more ECT session per week. It's not illegal to drive while undergoing ECT treatment, but (in the USA) your doctors will tell you not to and will insist that someone drive you to and from the hospital for each of your sessions. This is mainly because, if someone receiving ECT were to get into a car crash, that person could claim that the cognitive side-effects of ECT are what caused them to crash, and they could potentially sue the doctors and hospital.

I'm not very familiar with ECT for bipolar disorder, but for severe depression it is very effective. It has a higher success rate ("success" meaning that the patient receives either complete remission from depression or at least a significant reduction in it) than any other form of therapy/treatment. So, if it's anywhere even close to as effective for bipolor disorder and it's available to you, I personally would strongly recommend you try it.

Let me know if you have any more questions or concerns. Best of luck to you with whatever you decide to do.

I'm glad you didn't have permanent memory loss and that is helped some! I do know it can be helpful and I wanted to and believed that as well going in. I do want to share that I had a completely different experience unfortunately. I feel like ECT is like flipping a coin and betting all your money and life on heads (pun intended kinda). I do want to warn that permanent memory loss is way more common than they make it seem. And not just memory loss of about 10 years of my life but also loss of knowledge, executive functioning, working memory, and other mental and physical functioning. The loss of self, of personality of any emotion. It is a high risk high reward thing. Unfortunatley, I did not get the reward I got more problems and no relief. I also had a lot of pain after the treatments. If you have any preexisting health conditions it could also flare them up worse at least it did for me. Also, the permanent memory loss is more prevalent in women weirdly and in people who have already had brain injuries. Just wanted to help you get another experience to make the choice with more information and warnings than I was given. Best of luck!

 

[Guy Smiley]

It didn't make me less suicidal, just messed up my cognitive functions and made me so dumb that I barely have the capacity to follow a recipe I used to make let alone a complex ctb or other daily tasks.

I'm glad you didn't have permanent memory loss and that is helped some! I do know it can be helpful and I wanted to and believed that as well going in. I do want to share that I had a completely different experience unfortunately. I feel like ECT is like flipping a coin and betting all your money and life on heads (pun intended kinda). I do want to warn that permanent memory loss is way more common than they make it seem. And not just memory loss of about 10 years of my life but also loss of knowledge, executive functioning, working memory, and other mental and physical functioning. The loss of self, of personality of any emotion. It is a high risk high reward thing. Unfortunatley, I did not get the reward I got more problems and no relief. I also had a lot of pain after the treatments. If you have any preexisting health conditions it could also flare them up worse at least it did for me. Also, the permanent memory loss is more prevalent in women weirdly and in people who have already had brain injuries. Just wanted to help you get another experience to make the choice with more information and warnings than I was given. Best of luck!

I'm sorry to hear you had such a bad experience with it. That sucks.

If anyone is interested to learn more about ECT, here are a couple articles that explain it in great depth and what research has shown regarding effectiveness and risks.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK538266
www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/treatments-and-wellbeing/ect

 

[Raven_Nevermore]

Anyone on here or know anything about electric shock treatment to the brain for bipolar etc.

I went through about 6 weeks of it, I think 13 or 14 years ago. While I've heard that it has (had) significantly helped some.. not so for me. Plus the short term memory loss during that time only exacerbated my depression. Then when I was going outpatient, it was very inconvenient and an added burden on my parents. However, there are those it does help. Like how medications can affect us all differently, I think the same goes for ECT. BTW, my nickname for it was Zap Therapy.

 

[Buildingsandcastles]

I ust reread this whole thing and I was like whoa that person has had a similar experience to me I should reach out....just to realize it was me. I didn't know I responded to things on the site in the past I just thought I read. These type of things happen so often and yet its still shocking saddening and surprising everytime it happens, because I cant remember.

I ust reread this whole thing and I was like whoa that person has had a similar experience to me I should reach out....just to realize it was me. I didn't know I responded to things on the site in the past I just thought I read. These type of things happen so often and yet its still shocking saddening and surprising everytime it happens, because I cant remember.

I know no one care and that this hasn't been posted in in a while so I'm not sure why I shared that.