Venting Failed partial hanging in psych ward… i fucked up

[GeminiButter]

I'm just scared because I don't have any official diagnosis yet- just several 'strong' suspicions from my psychiatrists who suspect I'm on the autism & schizophrenia spectrum's.

So it just seems like jumping the gun a little, I don't know what's wrong with me or if medications will help me (which I would prefer).

First time posting, but I've been reading for the last 24 hours and read this thread and maybe another one you posted about the psych ward (I got out about 6/7 weeks ago, so it's been on my mind a lot - they are rough places).

Lots of people have given information about ECT and are much more informed than me. I've never been offered it but it is something I have researched a lot especially recently when I've been so desperate and wondered if I should ask for it.

If you would prefer medications then it is right that you should be able to explore those options and try some out to see if any help you, even though it can take time to get the right ones or the ones that work best for you. You have the right to access appropriate care and they should listen to you and your preferences, and you've got the right to change your mind as well.

I'm sorry things are so difficult and painful right now. I am sending a lot of love.

 

[May_B_2_NITE]

I hope the new treatment helps you.

 

[Hollowman]

ECT is the number one most effective treatment ever discovered for mood disorders. Literally no medication has ever come close to its effectiveness. After each treatment there is temporary amnesia for the day or so following up to it, but there are no permanent side effects. I think you're very very lucky to be offered it and I really hope it works for you.

That's complete bs lots of people have suffered permanent memory loss.

 

[wiggy]

Part of accurate classical diagnosis is adjusting the diagnosis based upon treatment response. For example, if lithium is tried first on what was assumed to be an idiopathic/hereditary mania, and there is no improvement, it warrants further scrutiny and investigation as it was likely a misdiagnosis. At that point the differential should be reconsidered - lookalikes with different causes are more likely at that point than true mania, sucha as the aftereffects of intoxications, infections, thyroid disturbances, etc. In the case of failed ECT the failure itself provides evidence that the initial diagnosis was faulty. As I detailed above and in the previous post I linked, any sort of "depression" diagnosis is very likely to be a misidentification simply based on statistics. Common causes of "depression" nonresponsive to ECT (the most effective treatment available for hereditary mood disorders) include unrecognized or poorly treated general medical and neurological conditions, normal stress response in a neurologically healthy individual, personality difficulties causing prolonged and abnormal reaction to ordinary life stressors, etc, etc.
If no one recognized that may be the case (if that is the case for you, I don't know what you've been diagnosed with), then it definitely warrants at least a second opinion and further testing to narrow down what is actually wrong.
As an addendum long-lasting self-reported complaints of memory disturbance after ECT infallibly show normal responses on neurologic tests and are most likely to occur in individuals with personality issues. There simply is no mechanism by which that can even take place.

I appreciate your previous posts, they were very informative and have definitely somewhat reframed my view on ECT.
However, the way these last few points are framed are troubling to me. Firstly, it seems to me like you present the proposed effectiveness of the intervention as being somewhat unfalsifiable - if the condition is not resolved or side effects are presented, then it necessitates the conclusion that the diagnosis was incorrect. As far as I'm aware, the conditions which would be candidates for this kind of intervention do not have "hard" clinical markers that can be tested(in contrast to a simple condition to diagnose like, say, anemia), which means that a misdiagnosis is always highly plausible.
Most critically, since a subject cannot evaluate the accuracy of their own diagnosis, any assertion regarding the effectiveness of ECT as treatment for depression does not do much to inform you of how effective it would be in your particular case, especially if as you mentioned most depression diagnoses are inaccurate.
Additionally, a point on memory loss - I don't really think it matters much if it's real or imagined. In either case, if there is a deterioration of the subject's mental well being following the treatment, I believe it should be counted as a risk to be considered.
Is ECT usually carried out with the subject's consent?

 

[hang in there]

I appreciate your previous posts, they were very informative and have definitely somewhat reframed my view on ECT.
However, the way these last few points are framed are troubling to me. Firstly, it seems to me like you present the proposed effectiveness of the intervention as being somewhat unfalsifiable - if the condition is not resolved or side effects are presented, then it necessitates the conclusion that the diagnosis was incorrect. As far as I'm aware, the conditions which would be candidates for this kind of intervention do not have "hard" clinical markers that can be tested(in contrast to a simple condition to diagnose like, say, anemia), which means that a misdiagnosis is always highly plausible.
Most critically, since a subject cannot evaluate the accuracy of their own diagnosis, any assertion regarding the effectiveness of ECT as treatment for depression does not do much to inform you of how effective it would be in your particular case, especially if as you mentioned most depression diagnoses are inaccurate.
Additionally, a point on memory loss - I don't really think it matters much if it's real or imagined. In either case, if there is a deterioration of the subject's mental well being following the treatment, I believe it should be counted as a risk to be considered.
Is ECT usually carried out with the subject's consent?

>Firstly, it seems to me like you present the proposed effectiveness of the intervention as being somewhat unfalsifiable - if the condition is not resolved or side effects are presented, then it necessitates the conclusion that the diagnosis was incorrect.
It may seem like that because there is just so much relevant information I cannot possibly accurately summarize or convey, it must be read for oneself. For instance one of the books in that stack I posted, Melancholia: A Disorder of Movement and Mood, is not merely a textbook about the condition, it is a collection of studies and other papers by researchers which are so in depth on the subject that reading the book by itself requires quite a bit of background knowledge only obtainable by reading other textbooks in their entirety. I tried to touch on some important points but obviously I cannot communicate most or even all of them. Prior to the artificial injection of "major depression" into diagnostic textbooks, it was commonplace knowledge that melancholia is identifiable by laboratory and cognitive testing. I mentioned some commonly found abnormalities and commonly performed test procedures previously used in the diagnosis and which invested academics are attempting to reintroduce to the field. But you're right, at this time in history, there are no longer any concrete findings taken into account in most diagnoses of depressive disorders. They exist, but for political reasons they are not currently used at this time.
>Is ECT usually carried out with the subject's consent?
It has to be, there are so many legal hoops to jump through these days after political vilification campaigns that it is often difficult to get ECT to patients who desperately need it.