Mysteries of Mental Illness

I was terrified of ECT and thought how barbaric can you be? Because my only image of it was one flew over the cuckoo's nest. My first depressive episode, 25 years ago. When I walked out of that hospital, I said I will never be in a psychiatric hospital again.

I will beat this. I will find a way to overcome this and saw it as an obstacle and it didn't matter how deep it ran in my family. So when it happened again that was devastating. It's like some creature has inhabited my body.

And it's a creature that is very disdainful of me and sees no good in the world and no good in me. So who wants to stay there? Who wants to live with that? -

Narrator

Cynthia has been hospitalized five times and like about a third of those with depression has tried many treatments with little success. I have always been on an antidepressant and a mood stabilizer. But I have also used talk therapy reiki, acupuncture, and massage. Over the years, I've tried all of it.

I may be the only person that I know for sure who begged for ECT. I don't see this as a panacea. That said, I think that is critically important to give people a choice. All right, there we go.

Thanks, I'll see you. Bye bye, thanks honey. -

Narrator

To treat her latest depressive episode Cynthia received 14 sessions of ECT over the course of about a month. This visit will hopefully be one of the last. If people start to relapse, you can jump in with a couple of treatments and right the ship and get them back on their way. Do you want me to take your coat?

I think most of the stigma around the treatment comes from the fear and the misunderstanding of what we're doing. Today, patients receive targeted current, anesthesia and muscle relaxants. So ECT is safer and has fewer side effects. For people who have very severe depressions that haven't responded to anything else it's a lifesaver.

Maybe we should just go over what we're going to do. Okay. ECT from an efficacy standpoint is unsurpassed. But as with any medical treatment there are some side effects and the one that we worry most is that of memory loss.

You're not going to forget who your daughter is but you might forget a piano recital you went to of hers a month or two ago. When you're really depressed as you know, your brain kind of shuts down. That is really a blunt way to kind of reboot the brain and start things over. But we don't really understand that black box of how those changes in the brain result in a complex human emotion being corrected.

We really researched to indicate what types of mental illness it's most effective for. No one knows how any psychiatric treatment works. So the selection of a treatment has nothing to do with our understanding. It has to do with practical results.