Blogging About ECT, Hands on Experience

The best information in health care is from patients who have been there. Those who underwent treatment, suffer from a certain illness. It’s the kind of hands on experience physicians can’t deliver. On this blog I have collected some examples of these “hands on experiences”. Some recent posts were written about ECT by them with hands on experience.

Aqua on Vicarious Therapy wrote a post on ECT and media portrayals of depression treatment options. She is irritated by the negative portrayal of ECT in the media.

It irritates me, (and does not help me explain potential treatments to concerned family members), when the media, either by negative portrayal or by leaving positive and informative information about ECT out of stories about depression treatments, subtly dismisses or devalues an effective and proven helpful treatment for resistant/refractory depression.

Besides here opinion on ECT she also writes about treatment resistant depression. Rightfully she points to the fact that despite all the treatment options sometimes depression is not a treatable disease. Read her post on this topic here….

On jumpstarting a life with a little spark on the head the 7th lesson about ECT is presented. Yes this blog has some excellent lessons for ECT patients. This 7th lesson is about being informed on ECT. Two books about ECT are discussed:

Both of these books are not long (about 100 pages) but more detailed than much of the information I gathered on the web. These books are definitely more clinical in nature, but they are easy to understand and I think these details help you be more calm when you go through treatment.

For a more prosaic discussion on ECT and it’s efficacy please read: An E.C.T. morning by pistolpete on Necessary Therapy

Almost a year later and I’m still wondering if E.C.T. was right for my particular case. Given the information we had at the time, I have to believe it was worth a shot.

Mental health Update discusses a recent article: Rayner, Lauren … [et al] – The patient perspective of the consent process and side effects of electroconvulsive therapy Journal of Mental Health October 2009, 18(5), 379-388. It’s a survey of 389 people who had had ECT focusing on the consent process and side effects of the treatment. Interesting read.