Wow. Thanks for that. It was certainly worth waiting for.

Back at the old Mayo Clinic, each day I was asked whether I was ready to go view their promotional video on the ECT procedure. Each day, I refused, remembering my mother, and watching the other patients wheeled back from their treatments, alive, but not always there. [My charts noted with indignation my great 'resistance' to watching.] Somehow, I suspect this was not the video they were supplying.

It takes great strength and love to be able to bare your soul as you’ve done here and on your blog. The hospitals are never going to make a tape like this. That’s why someone else has to. It’s an incalculable gift. Mere words can’t express my gratitude.

P.S. Let me know next time you need props, and I’ll lend you an old lacrosse mouth guard (sans handle, I’m afraid).

God! Good for you to put words to the experience. Ironically, I will never forget what I went through with ECT. It was terrifying. I had 18 of them, and I remember telling myself, "Just endure this. Be a good girl. It will all be over soon. If you're a good girl, 'they' will let you out of the hospital." It was painful, frightening and humiliating. I grew up in Philadelphia, hung out there even after my parents moved us out to the burbs. I knew how to get all around town. After the ETC's I didn't even recognize that I was on Market St - years after the treatments. I don't even bother discussing my anger with my psychiatrist anymore because he denies my experience...Denies that I suffered memory loss. I used to be a Horticulturist, now I can't remember plant names, and I'm too tired and too addled to try and relearn it all and always too embarrassed to ask. Friends and coworkers came to me to identfy plants and bugs and diseases. It's all gone. What really ticked me off the most was later learning that I have and had a severe dissociative disorder. Why the hell would some shrink try to cure a dissociation with a procedure that amplifies it? I also was a cutter at that time and feel that by letting my self get ECT's I subjected myself to severe abuse. I'm so sorry, Liz, that you and others had to experience the pain, the fear, and the loss too.

Hey LS,

I don't think I inhaled a single breath while watching this. When you mentioned that you had undergone ECT, I thought it was but a single treatment. I had no idea it was multiple times.

You painted a picture so vividly that I could almost see you undergoing the "treatment." Liz, you are one of the bravest people I have ever met. I have the highest admiration for all you've experienced -- you are such a survivor. I don't know what Philly would do without your so important voice on MH issues.

That's even worse than I thought it was - I'm glad I forgot.

I think there must be a lot of money to be made by giving that to people who've been in institutions for a long time without showing any signs of improvement, and whose insurance is about to run out. Just give them a few treatments and all their overt signs of distress disappear. Before they recover enough brain functioning to begin having some of the same problems all over again, they are long since discharged.

I really enjoyed your video Liz. I too had ECT - only difference is that it was involuntary. OK there was another difference too - mine was to treat chronic psychosis, not depression.

Yeah, it was scary. Friggin scary. When I first woke up after treatment No.1, what I remember most was 2 headaches in my head, fighting with each other. And I had radical amnesia those 3 weeks.

But, all been said, it DID snap me out of my psychosis, something that not one drug in the world could do. And for that I am thankful.

Dear Liz,

I happened upon your website this early morning with much interest and I also happened to remember the video you participated in relating to ECT. I also just viewed your personal video entitled “New Video: ECT at last”.

I am somewhat troubled by your presentation now knowing that you’re also a managing editor. First by way of brief background I am a 43 year support person and health care advocate to my spouse as well as a mental health advocate and activist. Among the many hats I’ve worn through the years I was also a former trained DBSA (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance) facilitator, President and Board Member of a local chapter and a Florida state appointment as a Guardian Advocate as well as a site administrator of a website and proactive message forum for mental health relating to a new and innovative treatment option for TRD (Treatment Resistant Depression).

I am an advocate first and foremost for education of the patient and his/her support persons to make informed and un-coerced medical decisions in collaboration with one’s trusted, compassionate, knowledgeable and licensed attending physician. I am also an advocate for all treatment options with the hope that something proves efficacious.

With the above said I am troubled by your video as you seldom used the first person singular “I” but instead you frequently used the word “you”. I am not enamored with the potential devastating side-effects to memory and cognition of ECT but I also know that not all patients have suffered side-effects to the degree that “you” stated. I am also aware not only of my spouse’s case history and others but I shall stick with my spouse’s experiences. In all the years she’s had need for ECT she was never given an adult diaper contrary to your statement. In all of her treatments, to the best of my knowledge and I have been present for most, she has only wet herself one time.

Knowing that which I do today, ECT has a place in my opinion when suicidal ideations are uncontrolled and an individual is on the precipice of self-destruction. What I find you doing in your video is much like another young woman and her website, which is fear mongering instead of educating. Had you used the “I” word throughout your presentation I could easily accept and appreciate “your” experiences and learn from them but as an editor your use of “you”, at least in my opinion loses its creditability because it is not always true as “you” seem to imply.

I stopped at the point after viewing your video not knowing whether your advocacy is intended from a negative vantage point or one of proactive advocacy for education and to encourage hope and persistence. Your video in my opinion was more of a negative endorsement.

In any event, it had taken us some 37 years to find a treatment option that has helped us gain control, stability and long-term remissions over my spouse’s TRD which I refer to as “the beast”. So while ECT has its place, in my opinion, there are other therapies I would suggest the readership educate oneself to before the need for ECT arises.

Thank you for this opportunity to share my brief commentary.

Warmly,
Herb
VNSdepression.com