I had this treatment many years ago and the worry as to what it has done to my brain is the worst thing I carry. Are there any reassuring results? Can some people simply recover?
I am seeking reassuring answers to free me from the baggage of this.
Elaine

data…we need data….how many people have got permanent amnesia after recieving ECT??? over the period of 25 years how many people have shown side effects and how many have shown no side effects at all….numbers can prove it….because me, after doing so much research am still not able to make up my mind whether ECT is good or bad, should it be banned or not?? and i cant decide because there is no data!!!

I received this treatment 5 years ago and still suffer from not being able to remember or retain information just told to me, having to ask people to repeat themselves nearly every time. I thought I was alone, always hearing that ECT effects wore off. This is some assurance that I’m not losing more of my mind.

I received ECT treatement over thirty years ago after being told that it was safe, with only temporary side effects, and that it would help my depression.

To this day I have problems with retaining information. My long term memory is still excellent, but my short term memory is quickly overloaded and I lose information.

After my initial recovery, I went back to work as a payroll clerk and struggled with that although I had been previously a senior accounting clerk. I gradually worked my way back into accountancy but, even 15 years later, I suffered a stress burn-out largely because my memory-loss made it so difficult for me to do my work.

I remained out of the workforce until my retirement recently, working mainly in a domestic situation where my memory problems were not so much a hindrance.

Even today I struggle to accomplish tasks that require memory even though my memory tested out as in the top 98% of the population in a psychological test, twice. From having one of the best memories possible I have struggled for half my life with memory problems which can be traced to the ECT treatment that I received.

Depression is something that can be treated, that most people come out of eventually even without treatment. The adverse side effects of ECT are much more permanent and disabling than the depression. The remedy is definitely worse than the malady.

I hope that very soon this barbaric practice will be stopped totally, just as Frontal Lobotomy, another invasive and destructive ‘psychological’ procedure, has been.

My husband had ect treatments for his depression. It didn’t help his depression but it also left him with short term memory loss. We were told that the chances of that happpening were slim …WRONG!! He has lost all of his memory during the time he had them. Many important events occured during that time,birth of our first granchild(he was there and remembers nothing.)We thought that was going to be it then he started losing his short term memory. Needless to say,things only got worse after ect. I think they should be banned!!!

I was a final year vet student when I received ECT under section without my authority. I had a septicaemia at the time concurrently but none (sorry 1 did as he refused to sign but they just asked another psyche out of area who did)had the sense to realise I was feeling awful because i was prodromal for septicaemia (and had been in contact with leptospira) no one took bloods. they jumped for ect having given me largactil which led to me being zombified, well you should try it anyone with ME would be zombied by largactil. well I’ve had to contend with meomory dysfunction, word recall being wrong, there were traces of epilepsy on my brain scan after but not before, and the drugs gave me parkinsonian side effects. yes this is all true and not surprisingly i would rather see an acupuncturist next time. the treatment is barbaric, flawed scientifically, and seriously damaging. I have a knack of spotting people who have had the treatment without them telling me. Now they are suggesting it may be a personality disorder. It wasn’t anything like that before ECT. Quite possibly i have borderline contempt for pyschiatry personality dsorder realted to my distorted memory which makes life incredibly difficult at times, especially as my memory is returning at times 20 years later. I was unable to sue because I lcked the confidence to. Now i know that was a wrong decision. I should have done and made the headline if necessary. I will never get back all that bit of me that has been lost i suspect. A totally useless dangerous barbaric treatment. you only have to watch pigs being killed to realise it. And it hurt. they must’ve kept me low on anaesthesia because i was so ill. although the body doesn’t show anything in my head i was arching back back back and it was very very aversive. I would rather see an animal shot than electrocuted. There is no blood but the damge is there and all the more traumatic for not being visible. I would do anything i could to dissaude someone from this treatment. it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. your brain isn’t functioning properly so we’ll damage it further and hope it makes it better. excuse me? what sort of argument is that? The drugs are bad enough. still perhas i should be rateful it wasn’t a frontal lobotomy.

Head injured by neurosurgeries in 1980. Damage sustained. Shocked into oblivion in Manhattan of NYC. 1982. Lies on all my papers as to the reason for admission.
1991 finally entered the Rusk Institute for rehabilitation. “Cognitive Remediation”. They told me if a lawsuit would ensue they would back me up. Even though a severe injustice was finally acknoweldged…a lawsuit never ensued.
Tested in 1996 by an independent place in Manhattan by neuropsychological testing. Diagnosed short term memory loss. Showed the doctor there my diagnosis from the Rusk Institute not far away…
My true injury which I keep on an index card and review often…
Rusk Institute from April 5th. 1992 to Dec. 8 1994.
Long term memory loss
Short term memory loss
Focusing what is said
Memory dejavu
Time and Place disorientation
Impaired insight and judgement
Distractibility
Emotional Gaiting
Hemiparesis right hand side.

Ok…..I have had a little memory loss having had the ECT. However….

I have very few time periods that have been “forgotten”. My depression, however, is almost completely gone. Considering the fact that I was in and out of hospitals, on all kinds of meds for years and was dangerously depressed ( suicide being on my mind pretty much all of the time….), considering this–I can live with forgetting a code to one of my online accounts that I rarely used anyway.

People seem to be so general when they want to knock the merits of ECT–there are so many variables. Will the outcome overweigh the benefits? How many treatments are the right amount? How much does your doctor talk to you about the procedure, and how receptive is he to questions about ECT?

My Dr was very honest about the possible side effects. But he also didn’t feel the need to give me 12, 10, or even 7 treatments to see an improvement in my mood. From what I have learned in our area , there ARE some places that consider 12 treatments to be standard. I think that is absolutely absurd. Just as people require different dosages of medications to treat conditions, ECT is not a one size fits all solution.

And again…..regardless…
Would I rather be dead, or close to it , from my depression…or forget a few things.

By the way: I am bipolar, and had gone through all the meds that I COULD take, because all of the anti-deps were sending me into severe manic episodes.

I do have a friend who had ECT and stopped because of the memory issue. She also was having the ECT to deal with depression caused by SITUATIONAL REASONS! Uh, no, ECT won’t make a bad situation go away….so it probably was pretty useless for her.

I found all kinds of information about ECT, both pro and con, online and in the information given to me by my doctor. How anyone could be ignorant of the possible (short term ) memory loss is beyond me.

I am affiliated with a college in our area. I know for a FACT of two of the professors at school having had ECT. Yet, they manage to continue teaching. Well, go figure! Guess they didn’t “lose” their minds, huh?

It’s sad to me that when ONE person has a bad experience, all of a sudden –it’s a conspiracy! It’s all lies! It’s no good! I can understand people not choosing ECT if it doesn’t seem to be right for them….but not to speak for everyone else as well.

There are plenty of meds out there that do HUGE amounts of damage. Tardive Dyskenesia , for example. Or Clozaril, which can cause dangerously low white blood cell counts. And speaking from personal experience: at least two meds that are connected to Diabetes, due to the SIGNIFICANT number of people on these drugs that gain a large amount of weight.

I hope that with any psychiatrict procedure or med use, that people take the time themselves to read up on the possible side effects and benefits. Not just the paperwork your psychiatrist gives you. Read the information you get from your pharmacy–this often contains much more SOLID SCIENTIFIC information than other places. And ask your pharmacist questions. I’ve found mine often to know more about my meds and possible reactions / interactions than my psychiatrist. It’s their job! Check out some books from the library, go online, join a group, ask questions….

But please don’t continue or refuse help based on what someone at one web site says.

Good luck with whatever avenues you choose to handle your mental health issues.

Jacey-your situation quite different from someone like me leaving in hell for the past 27 years. And you say that if benefited you. Of that I am glad. I am glad of anyone whom it has benefited…BUT…what I have been lucky enough to be able to get to this stage of understand the “severe injustice” committed against me. I have also provided some SOLID SCIENTIFIC information of “my particular injury”. How competent are my statements. Well, they were made by the Rusk Institute in Manhattan. I presume a very competent place that deals with head injuries. Not what someone says on this site…but what some doctors say on this site. So, I am someone who is saying this from papers that can be found in the files of the Rusk Institute…”Ninuccio-Entered the Rusk April 5th. 1992 to Dec. 8, 1994. Injuries Long term memory loss
Short term memory loss
Focusing what is said
Memory dejavu
Time and Place disorientation
Impaired insight and judgement
Distractibility
Emotional Gaiting
Hemiparesis right hand side.
That is my reality. That is what people need to be aware of when they jump into ECT. I wasn’t and you see what happened to me. You were much luckier. These are not idle words. This is the symptoms which will never go away…Ninuccio.

Jacey…you know lots of things…but apparently you don’t know all the things that need to be known…this is another one of them…this is not what I say…this is what the Rusk said before beginning my three years of rehabilitation.
While you probably were passing all the insight that you have…this is the true insight needed to be looked at. Not by me…but a professional rehabilitation institute who sees many folks like me…and possibly even some that took your one sided advice…This is not what one person on this website says…this is what the RUSK SAID…A person who has not sustained any type of injuries is willing to defy the reality of this treatment. When this is passed on by someone in this group…fine…you can say what you say… “Cognitive strengths include basic attention and concentration skills,common-sense verbal reasoning skills,and problem-solving when structured with feedback. Visual memory performance was in the average range. “Verbal memory is severely impaired,which is consistent with research findings on neuropsychological performance following electroconvulsive therapy”. (Mind you it took several years for damages of memory to even be acknowledged in regards to shocks by competent “objective’ testing). Because of the severity of this impairment, his world is fragmanted, and his level of participation in life skills is significantly decreased from his premorbid status.He is aware of his decline in functioning and responds with anger and frustration and sadness. It is recommended that Mr. Ninuccio be seen in individual cognitive remediation to develop compensatory strategies for memory, four times weekly for six months. The goal would be to develop strategies that can be used in a work site.”…ENOUGH SAID…Ninuccio

I work with computers as a hobby. I would never think that any problem with a computer, whether hardware related or software related, would be ‘cured’ by putting an electric current through the motherboard.

What kind of logic thinks that putting an electric current through the immeasurably more complex instrument, the human brain, is going to ‘cure’ any problem that the person has?

In fact, it is becoming more and more obvious that the ‘treatment’ ‘works’ in the same manner as a brain injury would ‘work’ and that is because it is a form of brain injury.

The main researcher, who is paid by the manufacturers of the ECT equipment, and who has denied this for the past couple of decades, recently published his own research that corroborates these findings of other researchers.

The cat is finally out of the bag. But how long will it take to get all the legislative support for involuntary ECT treatment removed from the statute books of most Western countries?

Paul

I cannot believe it when people who have had shock treatment take it so lightly that they have lost some “memory”, as though it was a slight side effect of supposedly “curing” depression.
My case is very different because I was shocked involuntarily. I was only 18 yrs old, detoxing from diazepam. Years later now, I have never been able to remember anything. Sometimes I tell my children, “Oh, yes, I remember that”, because they are so disappointed that I don’t know what they are talking about. I have never been able to hold a job, because I cannot learn. I have become very passive, as I would say that a person who looks at memory loss as a small side effect might be categorized.
There is no cure for depression. People who are unhappy or very very unhappy such as depressed need healthy food, exercise, love, company of healthy people. Shock is just an expensive perverse “procedure” that puts money in the pockets of all those involved. Nurses and doctors and anyone who really believe it cures people are no more than sheep who question little and cower before authority.

I had ECT 4 yrs ago, after over 2 years of dehabilitating depression and tons of drugs. I will say it helped the depression after a while. My psychiatrist said it actually just makes the medication work better. I still take a couple meds, but on the whole have been able to work and function normally and have a normal life, EXCEPT for the short term memory loss. I have virtually no memory of any time during and after the ECT. I currently have extremely poor memory. It is almost a handicap for me. It embarrasses me everyday of my life. I guess if given a choice i’d rather have no memory than have the depression back…but still…you’d think there’d be a better way.

I currently have a spouse under ECT
treatment initiated after voluntary admission, and after several months of increasingly agonizing depression. Living in hell describes it neatly.
This occurring after years of repeated admissions, and despite close Psychiatric and medical supervision and medication.
I know that a manic condition can become acutely life threatening if extended too far, and
I feel that a prolonged depressed condition is equally potentially brain-damaging and life threatening with repeated occurrence, severity and duration of episodes. I believe that deep depression maybe permanently affects memory, emotions and cognitive faculties,too.

Reading this, with so many negative comments and only a single positive reaction (jacey) to ECT it is hard to keep faith, but maybe those that had good response or don´t need to participate in the discussion or vent their frustration – since they´re cured – or are not too badly affected by side effects to see a positive side.
All there is left is the hope that the ECT will work and not harm.
best, M.Lehn

Anyone…who goes into the ECT. mode should first of all realize it is potentially damaging. Then, if they feel there is simply no other choice they should prepare themselves for potential damages. They should leave word with someone…and have that someone know of the effective ways of diagnosing head injuries…(that’s what ECT. has the potential to do). You just don’t jump in it with your finger crossed. YOU RESEARCH first. You research every aspect of it. Someone will be spraying electricity in your brain. What if the wrong things are going to happen. You need to prepare yourself for the after effects. Will you be properly diagnosed before you subject yourself to ECT. Neuropsychological testing needs to be done appropriately. Would you subject yourself to a place that will give you a brief test…or a place that will give you an extensive test…to gather all of your cognitive skills before they may get injured. The same tests should be given after the shocks. You need to know the proper procedures…and have someone on the outside monitor the situation…simple as that…Ninuccio.