koalajoey

What are the cognitive effects (aside from memory loss) that your clients are experiencing and that they believe is a result of ECT?

I had ECT. It didn’t help me but it didn’t hurt me either. A lot of the stuff people say is a result of ECT could also be a result of Major Depressive Disorder. However I’m curious to know exactly what they are reporting.

Memory loss is more associated with Bilateral ECT. Most places now use Unilateral only, or Unilateral as a first step, and only switch to Bilateral if they are not getting the results they want.

I had to do cognitive testing before and after the treatment, and I did a physical before the treatment also to make sure I was healthy enough. It’s not first line treatment. It’s last line treatment. I was acutely suicidal and dangerous to myself. That is for whom the treatment is intended.

This is awesome! When I was locked up in the US I wanted to learn Spanish from some of the girls who spoke it. Sadly none of them had any desire at all to teach me. Are they helping you learn to write also?

Me too. It’s going on my never ending list of why I can’t have kids because pregnancy terrifies me.

It's cool they offer you that. The only classes available to me when I was in jail were religious in nature, arts and crafts, or "creative writing". I believe there was GED available for some, but not to most of the women. I hear there is more available in actual prison. At any rate it would be awesome if they offered second language classes. It would be a good way to keep people busy, give them something to work on, learn a new skill they could take with them...

Yep. I was an inpatient in a hospital for several weeks while this was all going on. Eventually I just said I felt better because I hated the hassle of it all, but like I said, it didn’t hurt me either. I just don’t think it made a noticeable difference. But I was able to get out of the hospital and not kill myself obviously. My major problem was I was addicted to heroin anyway, so no amount of ECT or Prozac was gonna fix that. They had this idea that my heroin addiction was a result of depression (true) and if they treated the depression, my addiction would resolve itself (laughably fuckin false). Methadone is eventually what saved the day there.

At any rate, it was a large hospital in Saint Louis where I received the treatment and they did have some people who did the treatment as outpatients. But I think those people had mostly started as inpatients and transitioned to maintenance ECT as outpatients.

Doctors feel like if you have to trade a little memory loss for your life, so be it. I have read stories about people who say they’ve experienced bigger cognitive deficits, which might be true, but I always wonder if it was a symptom they had already and are just linking those things together in their mind. Because the mind can be funny. Really really funny.