Electroshock therapy makes a comeback

VIDEO: Surgeon and author Sherwin Nuland discusses the development of electroshock therapy as a cure for severe, life-threatening depression -- including his own.

MELISSA DAHL (MSNBC):

When Bill Russell tells people that his severe depression was relieved by shock therapy, the most common response he gets is: "They're still doing that?"

Most people might be quicker to associate electroshock therapy with torture rather than healing. But since the 1980s, the practice has been quietly making a comeback. The number of patients undergoing electroconvulsive therapy, as it's formally called, has tripled to 100,000 a year, according to the National Mental Health Association.

During an ECT treatment, doctors jolt the unconscious patient's brain with an electrical charge, which triggers a grand mal seizure. It's considered by many psychiatrists to be the most effective way to treat depression especially in patients who haven't responded to antidepressants. One 2006 study at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina found that ECT improved the quality of life for nearly 80 percent of patients....

But not everyone responds as well as Russell, say critics of the treatment who warn that the cognitive side effects, such as memory loss, are too severe, and that the fuzzy, foggy state of mind that ECT initially causes simply makes patients temporarily forget about their sadness. (Nearly every ECT patient experiences confusion, inability to concentrate and short-term memory loss during the treatment.)

"We talk about cognitive deficits and memory loss — really, that's brain damage," says John Breeding, a psychologist in private practice in Austin, Texas. Breeding has counseled several past ECT patients, who say they’ve suffered long-term cognitive damage as a result of electroshock. He’s working to ban ECT in his state, and he runs the Web site endofshock.com. READ IT ALL

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