McMurphy Had it Goooooood

If you’re severely depressed, running electric currents through your brain to induce a seizure might be the only cure. Shocked? FM was too when the Harvard Mental Health Letter reported this month that Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) is an effective treatment for severe depression when drugs and psychotherapy have failed.

In ECT, an electric current runs through the brain, inducing a seizure that lasts about 30 seconds. The patient is anesthetized and given muscle-relaxant to prevent injury. ECT often causes memory loss during the 2-3 week treatment period, but most patients completely recover and some have stronger memory than before treatment.

“UHS has and will prescribe ECT to patients with treatment resistant depression,” says Richard D. Kadison, the director of University Health Services (UHS). If a member of the Harvard community is prescribed ECT, the treatment is provided by a Harvard affiliated hospital.

Kadison says of the controversial view of the treatment, “I think it is largely misguided because of residual ‘myth’ from things like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the sense that this is some kind of primitive treatment/punishment rather than a medical procedure that is very effective and often has fewer side effects than medication.”

Mireya Nadal-Vicens, a tutor in Mather House and psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital who performs ECT says “Psychiatrists don’t often talk about it because people consider it a brutal treatment, but people don’t understand that the treatments are not painful...If I had a treatment-resistant family member with severe depression, I would not hesitate to recommend ECT.”

ECT isn’t confined in the troubled wards of “Girl, Interrupted”—and it isn’t nearly as shocking as it first seems.