Elecro-Convulsive Shock Treatment

The history of the treatment of mental illness is one of closets and fads.  Whether it be Mrs. Rochester confined to the attic at Thornfield Manor or the inmates of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; the arts have followed the trends of the times.  Although confining a person in restraints to a small dark room may no longer be considered humane and lobotomies are no longer performed the use of trauma in the treatment of depression has a long tradition because it works and does so almost immediately.  The larger issue has always been at what cost in terms of long-term side-effects to the patient involved. 

 

Cold showers may well snap a catatonic out of stasis temporarily but are not effective on a long-term basis. Insulin Shock Treatment may also work but has other dire consequences.  We know so little about how our minds work that finding treatments when they malfunction is very much an inexact science.  We have all heard about the placebo effect which uses the power of suggestion to affect a therapeutic result. Shock however applied introduces blunt trauma which serves to reconcentrate the mental processes on other things.  If you leg is amputated the blister on your finger may well stop throbbing.  If your house burns down that leaking tap will no longer be an issue. 

 

Electro-Convulsive Shock Treatment seems to have a polarizing effect on those in the mental health profession; one is either enthusiastically in favour or vehemently opposed.  My second-year university Abnormal Psych Professor spent nearly a quarter of our class time inveighing against its use.  Watching a patient who was formerly a crack-a-jack cribbage player rendered incapable of telling a Jack from an Ace leaves a lasting impression. 

 

The rehabilitation of ECT as a treatment for depression seems to have coincided with our current shortage of doctors and in-patient facilities.  The current thinking tends toward the rapid re-integration of mental patients back into the society at large.  This has led to the closure of many long-term care facilities.  Psycho-therapy whether one-on-one or in a group setting is a long-term proposition which carries attendant economic considerations.  Pharmacology suffers from the problem of compliance—how do you make sure the patient takes his medication on a regular basis?  ECT, whatever you may think about it, is effective because it enables a health-care provider to quickly discharge a patient from hospital. 

 

Would I willingly consent to its application to my body—Emphatically No!  Should it be used as a treatment of last resort—Maybe.  The sad truth is the fact that we have not been able to find an alternate treatment that is as rapidly effective in treating a disease that affects so many.