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ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy)
Broadcast starting week of May 4, 2005Purchase an MP3 instant download of this week's show to listen to on your IPod or computer!
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There is perhaps no more polarizing topic in mental health than Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT). Is it something out of Frankenstein, or a modern medical miracle? As heard on this week's program, the first recipient of ECT, an itinerant Italian in the 1930s, said of the treatment, “Not another one! It’s murder!” Six decades later, an Ivy League graduate says that he couldn’t have survived without it. Along the way, writer Sylvia Plath – read by actress Marsha Mason – recounts an experience of shock therapy in her novel, "The Bell Jar," Dr. Sarah Lisanby explains how the therapy works, and Marjorie, a middle-aged woman crippled by a depression, gets her first shock treatment in 30 years.Host Dr. Peter Kramer opens the show with commentary about the conflicting attitudes regarding electroconvulsive therapy. Even as visions of the treatment call to mind Frankenstein, advanced clinical experience and practice tell an entirely different story. The one place where opposing forces on the treatment agree is this: ECT provokes memory loss in varying degrees.
For many, ECT is perceived of as the treatment of last resort. That is, in part, one reason why a middle-aged woman from greater New York – she asked that she be called Marjorie – has waited 30 years between shock treatments. In the course of this program, producer Devorah Klahr follows Marjorie through her course of therapy with Dr. Samuel Bailine at the The Zucker Hillside Hospital on Long Island. We meet her hours after her first treatment and see her with her husband after her treatment course is completed. The outcome is promising. Marjorie does experience some memory loss, but was regaining it as the segment ends.
Dr. Peter Kramer then talks with Dr. Sarah Lisanby of the Brain-Behavior Clinic at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City. A researcher into the uses and effects of ECT, Dr. Lisanby explains how electroconvulsive therapy stimulates the “acute release of neurotransmitters” like dopamine in the brain and notes that the treatments can actually promote the growth of neurons or nerve cells. Dr. Kramer and Dr. Lisanby take some calls and talk about potential advances in the field – among them, techniques like Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and Magnetic Seizure Therapy.
You can learn more about Dr. Lisanby’s work and research at her web site, www.dr_lisanby.yourmd.com
In the course of her short life, writer Sylvia Plath became a sinecure for depression. In her highly-acclaimed novel, "The Bell Jar" she uses protagonist Esther Greenwood to guide the reader through Byzantine and labyrinthine world of psychiatric treatment of the 1950s and 1960s. In an excerpt from the novel, four-time Oscar nominiated actress Marsha Mason reads of Esther’s encounter with ECT.
Dr. Kramer next speaks with medical historian Jonathan Sadowsky of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland about ECT through the ages. Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, it turns out, was a practitioner, though no kites were involved. And while some Italian researchers noted that electric shock made some animals docile at the slaughterhouse, their first human subject, an indigent man from Rome, said of the treatment, “Not another one! It’s murder!” Such negative impressions were reinforced by the likes of the 1975 film, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest." Still, Dr. Sadowsky tells us, the changing perception of the brain/mind in the popular imagination – coupled with modern treatment options -- has made us more receptive to ECT.
Finally, while early technicians of the 1930s were clumsy in their first forays into electroshock therapy, essayist Joe Cherner believes that he is alive, in part, with the help of ECT. As he explains, a life of material comfort offers in fact no comfort against the onslaught of a major depression.
Help for depression and other mood disorders is available, though. You can take a confidential screening test for depression by visiting the website of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance.
Heard on this weeks program:
