Posted by bleauberry on January 16, 2012, at 5:11:28
In reply to ect, posted by markwell on January 15, 2012, at 13:04:33
I had ECT and it did not work. Well, actually it did, but only for about a day after the final shock, and then I was in an ambulance after that threatening suicide.
I've actually never heard of anyone getting good results with ECT. My feeling is it is an overhyped tactic. Dangerous too.....no one knows what frying the brain like that is going to do, putting the person's entire body into a massive seizure by electrical shock, so bad that the person is flooded with barbituates to keep perfectly still during a seizure? I dunno.
I have seen many reports however of what I call "turning the page". That is, ECT for me and other people has seemed like a way to close an old chapter and open a new one. The new one might not be any better than the old one, or it might, but at least it isn't the same endless nightmare....it's a new start. If nothing else, ECT will wipe out enough memory that it is almost sort of like starting over.
I couldn't even drive around my small town without a map after ECT. To this day I still have huge chunks of my life gone....no memory whatsoever of them. Names, people, events.....gone.
But of course, along with that were a bunch of bad memories of the depression too, gone. My cognitive function is less than it was, and name recall is real bad.Since then I have discovered that a couple herbal plant medicines directed at several things....anti-inflammation, anti stealth hidden infection, anti-toxin, anti-depression, anti-anxiety, anti-mania.....have helped me more than a backpack full of meds, ECT, another backpack full of herbs. No one told me I had other options and that plant medicines of the earth actually can have more benefit than anything man makes. Glad I found out finally though.
Keep in mind, psychiatry is not a science, there is very little known about the brain or the drugs, and the whole thing is very young (just a few decades old). II'm just sayin, I think we put a large amount of undeserved unjustified faith in the drugs that are available for prescription. It's almost as if people really actually think that's all there is, that's all the choice there is, as if only a substance invented in a lab can heal a person's symptoms. It just aint so.
poster:bleauberry
thread:1007319
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120108/msgs/1007425.html