As I passed by my living room on back in November, I heard something that caught my attention on the TV. CTV morning news was on at the time. Normally I don’t watch for long as I don’t care much for the opinions of Bell Media and what it’s owners wish to cover, but this time I was hooked in.
The news piece was part of a health segment called ‘Lifetime’, hosted by Pauline Chan (you can view the CTV video I’m talking about here). The opening statement nearly made my jaw drop to the floor: “Only about 1% of patients who could benefit from electroconvulsive therapy even consider it, because most fear the memory loss it causes. But for those who do try it, it can provide relief from the darkness and even suicidal thoughts associated with depression.” I spun on my heels, ran back to the TV and rewound the channel feed back to the beginning of the ‘Lifetime’ piece, just to make sure I had heard this correctly. Had CTV News really suggested people with depression make use of a lobotomy technique created in the 1930s to provide ‘relief’ for their depression? Yes, they did.
As I continued to watch the story, I couldn’t believe what I was watching; Ms. Chan actually built a case arguing in favor of this form of lobotomy:
-…Doctors acknowledge it (electroconvulsive therapy) as the most effective anti-depressant available, with response rates ranging from 70-90%
– Medications are only effective for about 50% of patients
(of course as always, there are no sources provided for these facts, you are just supposed to take the mainstream media’s word for granted because they know best…..right?)
In the piece Ms. Chan shows a clip of Jack Nicholson from the film ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, and goes on to say that this depiction of electroconvulsive therapy was ‘brutal and frightening, but the reality is very different for the vast majority of patients…who benefit from the technique.’ She fails to mention that a large reason why people do not go into violent, dramatic seizure like Nicholson portrayed is because they are given muscle relaxants and put under anesthesia before they are electrocuted. When this treatment was first being administered nearly 80 years ago without relaxants or anesthesia, patients were known to dislocate or even fracture their long bones due to the induced seizure ( located in the second paragraph of ‘history ‘section).
Some other notable points regarding the treatment:
-The seizure lasts for minutes
– Over 50% of those who use the treatment relapse within 6 months after completing ECT
– the most common side effect of this treatment is confusion and memory loss. The confusion usually lasts for a few hours; the memory loss appears to be permanent
– Bilateral electrode placement is known to cause confusion and memory loss more often, and is the method of application depicted in the CTV article and appears to be the main method of treatment
After reading and hearing about this treatment and its effects, I decided to see if I could find some people who have gone through the treatment to see what their reactions were, positive or negative. I found some detailed accounts of life after treatment put on youtube.com for everyone to see.
The first clip created by lspikol, is part of a series she made about her journey through life with depression. In her video she describes in detail her experience with the treatment; both going through it physically and her mental state. lspikol noticed that her depression was gone weeks after the treatment, but as I pointed out earlier, her suicidal depression returned months after the treatment was no longer administered, and she attempted suicide again (fortunately, she survived).
The second is a series of clips created by Rachel Star. This series of articles provides great insight into her experience with ECT, how she feels about the experience and the results at 1 year, 2 years and 4 years after the treatment. This is by far the most thoroughly updated personal account by an ECT patient I have been able to find at this point. Rachel Star’s situation is a bit more complex in that she suffered from schizophrenia, paranoia, OCD and insomnia as well as depression. She notes in her ECT updates that after the treatments her insomnia and OCD were completely cured, and that her schizophrenia and depression were made more manageable, but still remain.
What concerns me more than anything else is that both women explained that the ECT treatment has caused brain damage that has permanently diminished their cognitive functions, and they both cannot remember much if anything about the weeks or months surrounding the treatments as well as some memories before ECT. The woman from the CTV piece didn’t speak of brain damage directly, but did say that her husband is her memory now, which obviously speaks for itself.
Rachel Star at the time of the latest update, states the negative effects of the ECT treatment in the description box:
“The Negative:
The treatments did cause brain damage to me. I lost my ability to read and write or do anything with numbers. Most of this has came back over time though, but I still can’t sit down and read a book. My memory is pretty shotty. I have giant chunks missing, most from around the time of the ECT and the months after. I have no concept of Left and Right. If given a minute I can figure it out but like giving directions on the shot are hard, if someone says “Lift your left hand” that is kinda confusing. For awhile I was loosing parts of my day and would wake up strange places but this has pretty much stopped happening with time.”
She also notes that she is still using anti-depressants to manage the remnants of her depression, as well as taking sleeping pills sometimes.
From the accounts of these two women and the CTV article, as well as wikipedia, it appears that ECT damages the brain to the point that it is unable to function as it did pre-treatment. While this damage can reduce the intensity of some psychological issues, it also has serious side effects such as reduced cognitive function and amnesia, both of which are can be permanent according to the sources mentioned above. This sort of ‘treatment’ is extremely dangerous, simply because there is no way for doctors to regulate what sort of damage the brain will sustain during treatment, making every round of ECT potentially debilitating or lethal. CTV mentions NOTHING about what I have found above, and I hope that if you know anyone who is considering ECT, you will have them look at this article before blindly following the incomplete story that CTV has created.
Wikipedia and healthyplace.com state that “ In the first few decades of ECT’s use, death occurred in 1 in 1,000 patients. Current studies report a very low mortality rate of 2.9 deaths per 10,000 patients or, in another study, 4.5 deaths per 100,000 ECT treatments.” 4.5 deaths per 100,000 treatments seems small, but if we refer back to the CTV article, the woman undergoing ECT is continuously having these treatments done for decades. They are normally done 3 times per week, for however many weeks the doctor deems necessary. If 50-70% of patients relapse within 6 months and use ECT again, 100,000 treatments will accumulate very quickly, especially if ECT gained more popularity.
It is also very important to mention that at this point in time, Doctors have no idea how ECT actually works! The John Hopkins Medical Institute admits this on page 5 of their PDF entitled In Depth Report- Electroconvulsive Therapy Today, stating that “ECT works to rebalance that system (the brain). But exactly how it accomplishes this remains a mystery to neuroscientists and psychiatrists.” This is also mentioned very briefly in the CTV piece.
ECT is a perfect example of how modern medical doctors are not adequately equipped to treat anything other than that which needs to be dealt with by surgical means. Psychological disorders are a very complex issue and is a field of study that we still do not know very much about. Now more than ever, I hope that as a civilization we have grown enough to understand that damaging or mutilating our bodies and minds is not the answer. Our bodies and minds can heal themselves, when given what they truly need to function correctly. I have seen this first hand personally in my life and family, and will elaborate more on this thought in my next post. In the meantime, here are some of the the places I go when I need REAL health information that helps me and my family stave off things from the common cold to Osteo-Arthritis and more:
youngevity.com (I work for this company and support them wholeheartedly)
Thanks for taking the time to check this out. Leave a comment and let me know what you think about the information that has been posted, feedback is always appreciated. Be safe.
Kori
Grassrootstruthblog 