#electroconvulsive therapy

[lunaeclipse2024]

1,000 units of electricity going through the feeble brain.

#electroshock #shock therapy #shock torture #electric shock #electroshock therapy #electroconvulsive therapy

[historian-in-pearls]

I have a funny feeling I might have a seizure at some point today. That's a possible side effect with treatment, so I'm hoping not but trying to be prepared just in case. Please pray for me!

#ect #electroconvulsive therapy #seizures #january 2024

[growing-home]

i spent nearly two decades of my life severely depressed and suicidal and for so long i believed wholeheartedly that it was my fault. i believed that the reason no medication or therapy had ever worked for my depression was because i wasn’t ACTUALLY depressed— i believed i was just lazy, bad, manipulative, and just using depression as an excuse for the inherent badness i thought was inside me. this was a story that was told to me and reinforced over and over again by treatment providers.

this past summer, i tried my 30th+ psychiatric medication, not expecting to see any results. the day i realized it was working was the day i realized that i was…planning my future???suddenly i no longer wanted to stay in bed all day and never go outside. i no longer wanted to isolate. i wanted to see people, talk to people! i started spending more time with friends and facetiming people and talking on the phone, things that i rarely did in the past. when i had been depressed, the only movies/tv shows i could focus on were super intense, fast paced, and scary or disturbing because that was the only way to hold my attention. after starting this medication, i started enjoying SITCOMS! i no longer felt like i was fighting to just get through every single day of my life.

there was such a clear and measurable difference in the quality of my life that i started to question why i believed that my depression had been my fault. it became very clear to me that a large part of my depression had been biological. i had not been lazy or bad. i had been sick. my brain was sick the same way other organs get sick sometimes. this brought up a lot of grief for me— grief for all the lost time that i’d spent trying to find something that worked, grief for how much pain i had been in for so long. but it also brought up sheer FURY at all of the therapists and psychiatrists who had treated me like i just wasn’t trying hard enough to get better.

i had been labeled treatment resistant, of course, and the only recommendations i had received after being given that label were TMS, Ketamine, and ECT. once i had tried all three with no success, i believed i was just a lost cause. i thought i was out of options. i was made to feel that way by so many treatment professionals. i was told that nothing was working because of my complex trauma and that once i healed from that then i would stop being depressed (as if it’s that easy to just fully recover from CPTSD!) i was told that i just needed to do more DBT, i just needed to live and breathe DBT skills and then i would get better, even though i’d done intensive DBT programs for years with no improvement to my depression. (yes, it helped me to change my behavior and quit self harm, but behavior change isn’t necessarily indicative of a change in mood. i could do all the right things all the time and still be in excruciating mental pain.)

i was told that i just wasn’t trying hard enough, or that i must have a personality disorder, or that i just needed to exercise more, or eat less, or eat MORE, or eat differently, or get a job, or get a dog, or do yoga, or acupuncture, or biofeedback, or find purpose in my life— psychiatrist after psychiatrist looked for something to blame everywhere but in the mirror. instead of admitting that they weren’t equipped to help me, they made me believe that it was MY fault i wasn’t getting better. and i believed them. for SO long, i believed them.

and now after finding a medication that works for me, i see everything so much more clearly. psychiatrists need to put their enormous egos aside and actually treat patients with treatment resistant depression instead of blaming us for suffering from a (partially at least) biological illness. if you’re a doctor and you know that a patients illness is outside of the scope of your abilities, either do more research and get more training to help them or refer them to someone who specializes in what they need. don’t keep them around letting them pay you thousands of dollars while you make them try the same thing over and over and over again and expect to get a different result. people act like things like ECT are a last resort option, and in doing so make people believe that if it doesn’t help then you’re out of options. but nobody ever tried me on tricyclics. nobody tried me on MAOIs. nobody told me about how some dopamine agonists like Pramipexole have had some success in treating treatment resident depression. instead i was made to feel like asking to not be suicidal daily was asking for too much. if you’re a clinician who thinks that’s asking for too much, you’re in the wrong profession. we can do better than that. we NEED to do better than that.

in my experience, out of every profession, doctors have some of the biggest egos i’ve ever seen. i say this as someone who is both mentally ill as well as physically disabled. many doctors HATE it when you do your own research. they HATE it when you have suggestions, or when you ask for what you need. it’s almost as if they feel threatened by it, like they need to believe that they are superior to their patients because of how much time and money and energy they put into going to med school— they need to believe they hate their hard work was worth it so they have a tendency to dismiss any ideas their patients might have. i don’t care how many years you’ve been in school. you do not get to tell your sick patients that it’s their fault they’re sick to justify your laziness and refusal to learn new things. put away your god complex and actually listen to your patients.

and the strangest part to me is that the longer you have been suicidal for, the less seriously they take it. the same way that the more chronically ill you are the less people believe you. it’s bizarre— when people see pain that is beyond what they can fathom, instead of feeling empathy, they tell you you must be faking it or that you must be looking for attention. i’ll never understand this. it’s as if they think that suicidality doesn’t need to be taken seriously unless the patient has successfully completed suicide. and i think it’s very clear how that logic is flawed. i was treated like i just wanted attention whenever i asked for help with my chronic suicidality and it made me terrified to ask for help with ANYTHING. i still constantly am afraid that if i’m too honest with clinicians then they’ll think i just want attention. attention isn’t a bad thing to want, all human beings need some degree of attention, but regardless that doesn’t negate the severity of a person’s suicidality. i wasn’t attention seeking by asking for help. i was STRONG. i was really fucking strong, far stronger than i should’ve had to be. i fought for my life every single day and i am lucky to still be here but it’s not luck that got me here. it’s ME that got me here.

i don’t want to make it sound like i speak for everyone who has suffered from TRD, because i don’t think that would be fair. i can’t tell you if there’s a med out there that’ll work for you. all i can tell you is that most psychiatrists prematurely tell chronically suicidal patients that there is nothing they can do to help them or that they’re out of medication options. if you’re a psychiatrist or doctor and you feel yourself getting defensive while reading this, i invite you to get curious about where that activation is coming from.

and if you are someone with treatment resident depression or chronic suicidality reading this, i am telling you now: your illness is not your fault. i don’t know if it’s going to get better or not, but i can promise you— it is not your fault and it never has been.

#my words #treatment resistant depression #treatment resistant #major depressive disorder #major depression #clinical depression #transcranial magnetic stimulation #tms #rtms #electroconvulsive therapy #ect #electroshock #electroshock therapy #psychiatry #psychiatrist #dbt #therapy abuse #therapy #ketamine infusion #spravato #ketamine therapy #esketamine #trd #cptsd recovery #trauma healing #chronic illness #chronic pain #mine

[diegothecrazyfemboy]

I need it urgently.....

#mental hospital #mental patient #crazy #ect #electroshock therapy #psych ward #electroconvulsive therapy

[only-shadows-dwell-where-we-are]

Redwood Psychiatric Institue - Part 3

MASTERLIST - PART 1 - PART 2

Note: I finally wrote this into a story!

Please don't hesitate to send in asks or prompts for this series! Also this one is kinda a short one because it didn't make sense to add the next one to make one long part. But next one gets fun 😈

CWs: psychiatric hospital whump, medical gaslighting, noncon drugging, noncon sedation, syringes, ECT mention

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Rowan came to, he found himself in the adjoining room off his bedroom. He was lying on a dentist-like chair, across from the small open office space and beside a gurney along the wall. His arms were strapped down to the arms of the chair. It took him some time to remember what happened when he was last aware. Doctor Wilson stepped into view, accompanied by two orderlies, and then it all came flooding back.

"I told you to take your pills. You've left me with no choice now but to give you injections." Doctor Wilson moved closer to the chair Rowan was strapped to, slipping on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. 

"No, no.. Please! I- I'll take them, I'll take the pills!" Rowan cried, thrashing fruitlessly against his restraints. 

"I don't believe you, James." Doctor Wson replied, moving behind the chair to retrieve something. "Besides, you need to learn your lesson." 

Rowan strained his neck, desperately trying to keep his eyes on his tormentor. "And what lesson would that be?" He retorted. 

"That you do what I tell you, or there will be consequences." Doctor Wilson declared as he re-entered Rowans's line of sight, holding a syringe filled with clear liquid. 

Rowan struggled away but the grip of one orderly was firm as she held his forearm and allowed Doctor Wilson to position the needle over the vein in Rowan's elbow.

Rowan inhaled sharply when the needle was inserted into his skin with a painful pinch. He watched in horror as Doctor Wilson pressed down on the plunger, emptying the contents of the syringe into Rowan's veins. The cold liquid which began to flow into his body brought with it a sense of dread. He was never going to get out of here. He let a tear drip down their cheek as he looked up to face Doctor Wilson, who was removing his gloves with a condescending smile.

"You'll feel better soon, James."

The orderlies deposited Rowan back in his room, half-dragging, half-guiding him by the arms to the bed. His legs felt unsteady below him; he was woozy. Once they placed him on the bed, they changed his white hospital gown, and then pulled a white garment out. As they started pulling his arms into it, he tried to pull back, uncertain. The young female orderly grabbed his arms and forced them into the sleeves.

"What's.. it..?" Rowan slurred, his brow furrowed.

"Straight-jacket. Doctor Wilson said you can't be trusted so we have to put this on you." The older male orderly said, unempathetically.

The orderlies folded his arms across his chest in the jacket, then tied the garment up behind his back. They left him curled up on his bare-bones bed, tied up in a straight-jacket, and staring at the wall blankly as tears dripped down his cheeks.

----------------------------------------

For some time, Rowan's days were a blur of therapy sessions and injections. That intense anger that he originally felt at being called 'James' began to fade to a dull throb. He did suspect that might be an effect of the drugs pumping through his system; he was so out of it that he couldn't walk by himself and had to be dragged down the halls or pushed in a wheelchair. The straight-jacket had been left on.

He had no idea how much time had passed, everything was fading.

One morning after his medication, they placed him on the padded table beside the dentist-like chair. Doctor Wilson slid a machine over the top of the table, covering Rowan's head.

"Close your eyes please, James. This won't take long." he said.

Rowan closed his eyes. He heard the hum of the machine for several minutes, then it went silent. The orderlies pulled the machine away.

"These scans will help us to ensure your brain can handle another round of Electro Convulsive Therapy. The medications don't seem to be working to completly eliminate your schizoprenic delusions." Doctor Wilson explained.

"They aren't delusions.. are they?" Rowan asked slowly.

Doctor Wilson's face showed sadness and dissapointment. "Yes. What is your full name? Tell me again."

Rowan paused.

"Think about it." Doctor Wilson said.

"Remember what we've talked about in our sessions."

"Yes Doctor Wilson." The patient allowed himself to breathe two slow, deep breaths before he answered the question. "My name is James Lawson. I voluntarily committed myself to Redwood Psychiatric Hospital and any over version of my life is a delusion caused my mental illnesses."

Taglist:

@jazatronasmr @onthishamsterwheel @bumpthumpwhump @bloodsweatandpotato @whatiswhump @jancameforthewhump @dream-whump @ratking-whump @inkstainsonmyhands12 @halstead-shaw13 @sparrowsage

#whump community #whumpblr #noncon drugging #mention of ECT #electroconvulsive therapy #medical whump #needles tw #psych whump #psych hospital whump

[everydayesterday]

Gene Tierney. That paragraph hits so fucking hard.

She had 27 treatments. I've had 39. Like so many others, our memories were destroyed. No one should have to endure that. It's psychiatric malpractice.

She talks extensively about dealing with Bipolar-I in her autobiography, so I guess that goes on the reading list.

#gene tierney #electroconvulsive therapy #ect #bipolar #actually bipolar #bipolar-I

[eudhf]

Hi! I'm 20M, and looking for a female to rp with. Im mostly into resus, defib, seizures, belly buttons, ect, ekg, tens units. If anyone is interested text me!

#cpr resus #resus community #resus #defib #tens unit #electroconvulsive therapy #dark electro

[hussyknee]

4th ECT session yesterday. Two more to go. The first one made my brain feel like a shuffled deck of cards, by now it feels like holey cheese. I can't remember half my life for the last few months, I can't remember half my current hyperfixation book, I have no memory of reading any of the fics I've bookmarked the last two weeks, I keep forgetting what year and month and day of the week it is. I keep forgetting words. I don't feel connected to anything in my life. Just an electron adrift in the vast.

This some Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind shit. Maybe how it works is you can't be depressed if you can't remember what you're depressed about. Amnesia fics are ruined for me forever. By next week I might go full-on Bourne Identity.

Never doing this again thanks very much.

(Just to be clear though, it's nothing like the ableist Cuckoo's Nest movie stuff. All I ever remember is the sedative being administered through the cannula and then being told to get down off the bed and wheeled into the ward. Don't even remember falling asleep. The most I've gotten is a slight headache afterwards.)

#electroconvulsive therapy #mental health #actually bipolar #amnesia #knee of huss #I don't remember what tags I usually use for these posts #aaaargh

[atypicalstrong]

heeeeeeey these meds are great actually. like i'm simultaneously mad/frustrated with all my old doctors and myself for never suggesting or seeking out mood stabilizers before. like i didn't remember this, but according to my records my old psychiatrist recommended 2 years of ECT without ever having given me a mood stabilizer to try. like. that's wild. it makes me so mad. just bc my diagnosis back then was major depression and cyclothymia, mood stabilizers were never considered but electroshock WAS...

but also, and more importantly, i'm just so THRILLED to have them now. like. i thought my brain was just broken beyond repair. and in a way it is, but that doesn't mean i can't do daily maintenance. i haven't felt this good since 2019. at least.

anyways the point is, if you have bipolar disorder or cyclothymia, maybe try taking a mood stabilizer BEFORE agreeing to ECT. even if you're young. no one explained to me that mood stabilizers (specifically anti-psychotic class ime, not anti-convulsant class or lithium) could help where anti depressants failed. I didn't even know I had a cyclothymia diagnosis until 3 months after I started ECT.

just because you've tried lots of anti depressants or anti anxiety meds, doesn't mean there aren't meds out there that can help you. do your own research. make sure you know all your diagnoses. get second and third opinions. ECT should always be a last resort for suicidal depression and/or bipolar patients. (obligatory "i cannot speak to ECT when used to treat epilepsy that's a totally different ball game")

you don't have to keep living like this. there are other options. it can and WILL get better even though it's not easy.

#bipolar disorder #bipolar #cyclothymia #cyclothymic disorder #major depression #major depressive disorder #ect #ect therapy #electroconvulsive therapy #mood stabilizers #disability #mental disability #mental illness #neurodivergence #uhhhh idk what else to tag that's actually relevant #just ya know..... if a doctor tells you there are No More Drugs to try and instead wants to shoot lighting through your brain #maybe get a second or third opinion before you agree #seriously wishing i had

[lunaeclipse2024]

Agonizing treatment, the result is worth it though, submission.

#electroshock therapy #electroconvulsive therapy #shock therapy #shock torture

[historian-in-pearls]

Please pray for me urgently. I woke up from anesthesia/treatment today more anxious than I've ever been in my life, and that's really saying something.

#prayer request #please pray for me #mental illness #ect #electroconvulsive therapy

[jokerpeterson]

Psychiatrists should dress up as the electro wizard when they do ECT.

#196 #the jorker #electroconvulsive therapy #electro wizard #ELECTRO RIZZARD

[diegothecrazyfemboy]

Wishing someday in my life, to erase all of my problems.....

#ect #electroshock therapy #electroconvulsive therapy #psychiatry #mental hospital #mental patient #crazy

[spacediva]

Had my first ect appointment! I am just a bit sore

#ect #electroconvulsive therapy

[kodiescove]

I seriously can't recommend enough that if you have treatment resistant depression/severe long lasting depression/severe suicidal ideation thar you should look into electroconvulsive therapy(electric shock therapy).

Its not scary like the movies portray it to be. AS FAR AS IM AWARE it is standard practice in 2023 that patients are put under anesthesia for the procedure(I know my hospital puts me under).

Seriously, I've been chronically suicidal since the age of 8 and ECT just came in and got rid of all that. It has literally saved my life and continues to save my life and keep me alive and functioning. You may not even need as long of treatment as I do.

Talk to your counselor and psychiatrist about this option, especially if you don't feel like medication is doing enough for you.

#mental health recovery #mental health awareness #mental health #mental illness #depression #treatment resistant depression #electroconvulsive therapy #electric shock therapy

[mourningcrypt]

Medical Monday: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)

This Jolting form of treatment- which used to be called electroshock or shock treatment was a popular tool in the 20th century, and can still used to this day. To some it’s a helpful remedy for those with depression and other mental disorders, and to others it’s medical torture.

Beginning in 1934, Hungarian psychiatrist Lazlo Meduna needed a new technique to treat mental illnesses by inducing a seizure. At the time, the way to do this would be to inject the patient with an epileptic agent, though it would take minutes after the injection for the seizure to occur. And, those that were given the agent would feel uncomfortably terrified prior to the seizure. Despite this, Meduna would treat a catatonic and mute patient, giving him an epileptogenic agent called camphor through the muscles. This was done about four times throughout the treatment- and after he was able to move, speak and take care of himself. 

Later, two Italian physicians, Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini would form the technique of shocking the patient through electric currents. Sadly at first their idea was tested on dogs, where about half of the animals died as result in cardiac arrests. They would put probed into the dog’s mouth and rectum and use an upwards of 125 volts. Later when jolting from the head- it was realized that in this way death was more rare. Soon it was time to use a living person. Their first attempt on a human was on April 11, 1938, where a 39 year old patient by the name of Enrico X was given 11 rounds electroshock treatments within the span of two months. This man was brought to the doctors as a sort of test subject, thinking he was just someone off the street. He wasn’t in the right state of mind to consent to it either. But alas- the treatment went on, and at first, the starting volt was 80, and the final was 110. This was where Cerletti would believe this was a safe and affective treatment on humans. After the 11 rounds concluded, he was able to return to his family who had been looking for him and re-join society.

Unfortunately there are negative stigmas that surround ECT, in the 1950’s it was apart of conversion therapy in Britain. One man who undergone the treatment in 1970’s still suffered from PTSD and terrible mental heath, even over 40 years after the “treatment”.  The thought of banning conversion therapy wouldn’t be brought up until 2018. Another negative practice was its use in mental hospitals in the states. In the 1940’s and 50’s patients at these hospitals would often fall victim to this “treatment” but not always to help with mental disorders but because they were seen as too “unruly” by staff. In this cases they were also not given any proper care such as anesthesia or muscle relaxers, and would even be tied down to further control them.

Today, ECT does have its benefits in relieving symptoms in disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar, and those suffering from suicidal thoughts- and also help with treating catatonia. Typically this treatment is a last ditch effort if other options such as medications and treatments have not worked. About 100,000 are treated with ECT every year, and it’s recognized all over the world by many medical associations as a viable procedure.

Sources: A Brief History of Electroconvulsive Therapy, What is Electroconvulsive Therapy? (ECT), Electroconvulsive Therapy: A History of Controversy, but Also of Help, Electroconvulsive therapy: 80 years old and still going strong, The Disturbing Story of the First Use of Electroconvulsive Therapy, Gay 'conversion therapy': Man given electric shocks demands apology, Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

#medical monday #mourningcrypt #medical history #dark medical history #electroshock therapy #electroconvulsive therapy