 |
 |
Yes, I have seen it and my family has personally benefited from the treatment. It certainly does appear awful! Movie films from the early mental health days are terrible to watch, but we have come a long way from those initial experiments. My wife had two nervous breakdowns (three months confinement each time) precipitated by post partum depression. The EST (it was called Electro Convulsive Therapy back then) plus Insulin Shock Therapy brought her back to the real world. She still is and will always be an Acute Undifferentiated Schizophrenic, but that can be controlled by medication (if you can get the patient to stay on it). Yes, EST does look awful to an observer as the treatment used to be administered, but it was not awful to the patient since they were immediately rendered unconscious with no pain. In the present day procedures, muscle relaxants are given to prevent the convulsions, a mouthpiece is inserted just in case to prevent broken teeth, and the patient is sedated before the procedure begins. The only slight drawback I have observed is about a one day loss of short term memory (never to be regained). Long term memory starts returning in about 2 hours and is fully back the next day. I would imagine there are lots of medical procedures that we would never allow to be performed if we had already observed or knew what takes place in the operating or treatment room. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. These therapies allowed us to practically empty our mental hospitals and asylums many years ago. It is sad that the result over time has been a lot of homeless people on the streets because of no system in place to assure that they keep taking their medications and because of the civil rights and other legalities now controlling society. We have no way of bringing these suffering people back to a normal life. It is sad that EST developed the uninformed stigma that it now has. It is also sad that someone with a serious mental health problem usually cannot recognize their plight because their world is real to them and the rest of the world is wrong. It is extremely difficult to get someone to believe what you are saying and observing regardless of how they are perceiving the world about them. I like to thing of EST as a "reboot" of the "computer" in our head to restore corrupted and lost files and applications. Just one man's opinion based on actual experience and facts. This is much more than I ever wanted to say about our personal life, but I thought it important to give another perspective to this discussion. > ---------- > From: Greg Sterling[SMTP:[log in to unmask]] > Subject: Re: Electric shock treatmenets > > Have you ever seen anyone receive electric shock therapy? It's awful. No > thanks. > > Greg > >