Can ECT treatments make you worse?

ECT can’t prevent future depression, or fix any ongoing stresses or problems that are contributing to how you’re feeling. Some people have very bad experiences of ECT, for example because they feel worse after treatment or are given it without consent.

What is the success rate of ECT for depression?

These sessions improve depression in 70 to 90 percent of patients, a response rate much higher than that of antidepressant drugs. Although ECT is effective, its benefits are short-lived.

Is ECT used for severe depression?

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a medical treatment most commonly used in patients with severe major depression or bipolar disorder that has not responded to other treatments. ECT involves a brief electrical stimulation of the brain while the patient is under anesthesia.

Does ECT change personality?

ECT does not change a person’s personality, nor is it designed to treat those with just primary “personality disorders.” ECT can cause transient short-term memory — or new learning — impairment during a course of ECT, which fully reverses usually within one to four weeks after an acute course is stopped.

Is ECT worth the risk?

Risk Assessment of Electroconvulsive Therapy in Clinical Routine: A 3-Year Analysis of Life-Threatening Events in More Than 3,000 Treatment Sessions. Background: Extensive research has reported that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) can be highly effective in approximately 80% of patients suffering from depression.

What are some of the drawbacks to ECT?

Cons of ECT: Confusion post-treatment. Typically not well tolerated in the elderly population. Memory loss (retrograde amnesia) which usually improves within a couple months of the procedure. Physical side effects related to tension (nausea, headache, jaw aches, and muscle aches.

Why is ECT unethical?

ECT is not safe: it produces varying amounts of memory loss and other adverse effects on cognition in nearly everyone who receives it, typically lasting weeks or months after the last treatment (as well as many other adverse consequences, from ocular effects to postictal psychosis).

Is ECT cruel?

But while it was preferable to the chemical alternative, ECT could still be, by many accounts, cruel. The seizures could lead patients to thrash about wildly and even break bones, and was generally an “extremely unpleasant” experience, Sadowsky said.

Who should not get ECT?

For example, children under age eleven cannot undergo ECT for mental health disorders. People with heart conditions and people who cannot handle short-acting sedatives or muscle relaxers should not undergo ECT treatments. In pregnant patients, ECT does not pose any serious risk to the fetus, or the expectant mother.

Does ECT work for severe depression?

I am a proponent for any therapy option having the potential to safely and efficaciously yield a favorable response for severe depression, being FDA approved of which ECT has never been formally studied or approved while also exhibiting the least potential for serious side-effects.

Is there a third ECT treatment option?

I would also like to bring to your attention and that of your readers that there is also a third ECT treatment option. You’ve already addressed unilateral and bilateral and fitting between the two is bi-frontal ECT.

Does ECT therapy cause brain damage?

ECT is a procedure that causes brain damage. The word “therapy” is ludicrous. The T stands for terror and trauma. If one checks Peter Breggin’s website one can find references to numerous studies that show ECT causes brain damage and is the equivalent of an electrical lobotomy.

What is ECT and is it right for You?

Well, to put it simply, ECT is the most rapid treatment for severe depression that we currently have to offer – with a recent study in the BMJ highlighting its effectiveness.