Posted by Maxime on March 19, 2005, at 21:45:11
In reply to Re: I can't hold out much longer » Maxime, posted by Minnie-Haha on March 19, 2005, at 14:42:52
The are several reasons. First, ECT works by destroying brain tissue. I would like to keep mine thank you. Also, its beginnings were in a slaughter house in 1938 ...
Electrical FORCE is not good for any living thing. A baseball bat strike to the head will cause a person to alter their behavior and become controllable. Repeated hits will quickly render them docile and easy to manage. This is not an invalid or simplistic analogy. ECT involves tremendous force applied to the body, brain and mind via strong electrical current. On a certain level bio-chemical processes are basically electrical. Nerve functioning is electrical in nature. ECT disrupts and confuses the electrical activity of the body and especially the brain (and associated mind). Research into "bio-electrical" energy fields around living organisms indicates energy patterns and flows around the body and organs which are not yet understood. Strong electrical jolts of ECT most likely have negative and harmful effects to these energy fields, the purpose of which modern science barely understands.
Now I can just as easily find research that will point me in the other direction. That will help me see it as a cure. But unfortunately I KNOW too many people in real life who have had the following occur after ECT:
1. Memory loss - long and short term
2. Cognitive impairment. My friend lost her math skills.
3. A worsened state. Another friend actually became more suicidal and they had to stop the treatments.
4. It never ends. Very few people have just one round of ECT. Most people need booster shocks
Finally no psychiatrist can tell you exactly why or how it helps. When my pdoc tells me again how safe it is I will ask him to allow me watch as he receives "treatment". I am sure his response will tell me a lot.Because I am a writer I will once again end with a quote from Hemingway:
"Well, what is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient."- Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize-winning author who killed himself after complaining that psychiatric electric shocks had ruined his career by destroying his memory.So that is why I will not have it done. Ever.
Maxime
> > ... I am so scared that I am going to get tricked into having ECT. When you feel so low and someone hangs a carrot in front of you, it's so tempting to go for it even if it's rotten inside...
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> I'm sorry... I don't know you or your story. (I feel like I've got to know some posters here pretty well, but not you.) May I ask why you're scared about ECT? I haven't had it myself... Used to be when I'd here about it, I'd think of some horror stories of the 1950s or something with people in institutions being given procedures against their will. Things like lobotomies and "shock therapy." But from what I've read, the procedure (at least nowadays -- I don't know how accurate Hollywood depictions have been about the past) is painless and safe, and what's more, very effective. I think if I ever got to a point where medication and psychotherapy quit working for me altogether, I'd consider ECT. Of course, I'm no expert. Has your research shown a high risk for this?
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poster:Maxime
thread:472245
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050317/msgs/473015.html