Thought provoking post, Bryn, and one on which I was perhaps already biased :) as someone who used to undergo ECT without a choice( read: I have epilepsy) I could never understand the appeal. The memory loss is real. When I watched beautiful mind in high school, my body had a very visceral reaction to someone forcing ECT on the main character for schizophrenia when others don’t have a choice but to convulse. It made no sense to me why you would simulate what my brain experienced on the regular. I later learned my great grandmother underwent it for alcoholism and depression. Having gone through college and studied neuroscience and no having some perspective having been seizure free from sometime, I can also appreciate the things we do to make life livable and the fascinating ways the brain works. Although, from a purely scientific standpoint, I’m still not sold on the viability of ECT as a long term treatment. 😊
One more thing! The smaller, controlled treatments(love that we got there) remind me some of deep brain stimulation, ironically, and other seizure control devices that use electrical stimulation to try and stop or mitigate a seizure. Ah, neuroscience. Such a balancing act.
Thank you, Camille, for sharing your lived experience. (I’m glad to hear that you’ve been seizure-free for a while!) It seems to be one of those things that has data to support benefit for some, but why it works is still fuzzy. I should apologize, though, if you found the post upsetting or triggering in any way.
Oh, gosh, no! When I was 18 I might have found the topic a bit triggering but now it’s just something I think I have a really interesting perspective on. And it’s not talked about a lot and I just think it’s honestly fascinating how humans can engineer what one person is born with to be therapy for another. It’s a testament to human ingenuity and how different every brain is- which is one reason I love neuroscience.
I hope more research about why it works *does* come out because that’s where I kind of get lost. I can understand why it would act as a short term reset but long term results ? I’d love to know
That would be weird, having something that others use as therapy. I appreciate that perspective; I hadn’t thought of it that way before.
I liked the quote from a patient that I included, where she notes that ECT is triple bypass: life-saving, but not worth beans if you go back to no exercise and McDs. So it’s a short-term boost (pun intended?) but as a part of a larger care plan.
Yeah that’s a great analogy! And I can understand why some people get that short term boost. That many neurons firing at once is like someone wiped your hard drive for 45 minutes. But I would love to see more research on how it works to unseat mental illnesses that are often so treatment resistant and deeply wired in the brain. What we know is promising ; what we could know with more research is exciting 🤩
I’d love to see those results 👀 Folks (patients) feel it works but I don’t know how much is placebo and how much is still-unknown mechanisms of action.
Gosh, Bryn - I was partway through this post before I'd spotted what it was about! 🤣
Two words about my own experience of ECT:
1. Brutal.
2. Effective.
My own treatments as a psych inpatient would be early on a Thursday morning - on the same day, and around an hour before, my weekly meetings with my doctor and the numerous members of his team. I would still be so out of it that I would have to be reintroduced to them EVERY SINGLE TIME.
I guess it worked, but oh gosh, I absolutely hated it!
Wow. To have two readers reach out with lived experience was not expected, but I’m humbled and grateful for the learning. It goes to show and remind us: you really don’t know what others have been through.
I appreciate you sharing that experience, thank you. So happy you’re on the other side of it and it worked for you...so sorry it was brutal ❤️
Bryn, you'll laugh at this - I misread 'lived experience' as 'livid experience', and I was like 'yes, and I'm STILL very annoyed that they did that to me'! 🤣 But, I have to say, it did work. *mutters under breath* 🙄
Thank you so much for your very kind words. What you've done with this post is really important - you've got this story out there and have shone a much-needed light on something uneasy and difficult but which nevertheless still claims its place (okay, I'll put some question marks here, because it does sit so uneasy - ???????) in modern medicine.
Thought provoking post, Bryn, and one on which I was perhaps already biased :) as someone who used to undergo ECT without a choice( read: I have epilepsy) I could never understand the appeal. The memory loss is real. When I watched beautiful mind in high school, my body had a very visceral reaction to someone forcing ECT on the main character for schizophrenia when others don’t have a choice but to convulse. It made no sense to me why you would simulate what my brain experienced on the regular. I later learned my great grandmother underwent it for alcoholism and depression. Having gone through college and studied neuroscience and no having some perspective having been seizure free from sometime, I can also appreciate the things we do to make life livable and the fascinating ways the brain works. Although, from a purely scientific standpoint, I’m still not sold on the viability of ECT as a long term treatment. 😊
One more thing! The smaller, controlled treatments(love that we got there) remind me some of deep brain stimulation, ironically, and other seizure control devices that use electrical stimulation to try and stop or mitigate a seizure. Ah, neuroscience. Such a balancing act.
Thank you, Camille, for sharing your lived experience. (I’m glad to hear that you’ve been seizure-free for a while!) It seems to be one of those things that has data to support benefit for some, but why it works is still fuzzy. I should apologize, though, if you found the post upsetting or triggering in any way.
Oh, gosh, no! When I was 18 I might have found the topic a bit triggering but now it’s just something I think I have a really interesting perspective on. And it’s not talked about a lot and I just think it’s honestly fascinating how humans can engineer what one person is born with to be therapy for another. It’s a testament to human ingenuity and how different every brain is- which is one reason I love neuroscience.
I hope more research about why it works *does* come out because that’s where I kind of get lost. I can understand why it would act as a short term reset but long term results ? I’d love to know
That would be weird, having something that others use as therapy. I appreciate that perspective; I hadn’t thought of it that way before.
I liked the quote from a patient that I included, where she notes that ECT is triple bypass: life-saving, but not worth beans if you go back to no exercise and McDs. So it’s a short-term boost (pun intended?) but as a part of a larger care plan.
Yeah that’s a great analogy! And I can understand why some people get that short term boost. That many neurons firing at once is like someone wiped your hard drive for 45 minutes. But I would love to see more research on how it works to unseat mental illnesses that are often so treatment resistant and deeply wired in the brain. What we know is promising ; what we could know with more research is exciting 🤩
Still doing searches on the utility of ECT over here. Sometimes I forget the tension about the things I read every day. Thanks for this post!
I’d love to see those results 👀 Folks (patients) feel it works but I don’t know how much is placebo and how much is still-unknown mechanisms of action.
Gosh I have so many lists through the years for it and different conditions!
Gosh, Bryn - I was partway through this post before I'd spotted what it was about! 🤣
Two words about my own experience of ECT:
1. Brutal.
2. Effective.
My own treatments as a psych inpatient would be early on a Thursday morning - on the same day, and around an hour before, my weekly meetings with my doctor and the numerous members of his team. I would still be so out of it that I would have to be reintroduced to them EVERY SINGLE TIME.
I guess it worked, but oh gosh, I absolutely hated it!
Wow. To have two readers reach out with lived experience was not expected, but I’m humbled and grateful for the learning. It goes to show and remind us: you really don’t know what others have been through.
I appreciate you sharing that experience, thank you. So happy you’re on the other side of it and it worked for you...so sorry it was brutal ❤️
Bryn, you'll laugh at this - I misread 'lived experience' as 'livid experience', and I was like 'yes, and I'm STILL very annoyed that they did that to me'! 🤣 But, I have to say, it did work. *mutters under breath* 🙄
Thank you so much for your very kind words. What you've done with this post is really important - you've got this story out there and have shone a much-needed light on something uneasy and difficult but which nevertheless still claims its place (okay, I'll put some question marks here, because it does sit so uneasy - ???????) in modern medicine.
😘