Benefits Of Electroconvulsive Therapy

Electroconvulsive Therapy, or ECT, is a treatment in which electrical currents trigger a brief seizure, which eventually relieves patients from severe mental illness symptoms. This procedure is used on patients with different mental illness’, but heavily used on those suffering from depression. There are many different types of depression, situational depression, atypical depression, and major depression. ECT is usually given to those suffering from major depression. Major depression can be characterized as having a low mood almost always. For this reason, many people are administered this treatment. There are many benefits as well as concerns that comes with using ECT. Electroconvulsive therapy helps people with depression increase the hippocampus,

An efficient procedure developed by Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini in Italy 1938, and brought over to the United States in the 1940s, this form of therapy has been used to treat patients with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and acute mania. Many years ago, shock therapy was used in a careless way, such as using it as a form of punishment to patients in mental institutions. Doctors would not give patients any pain relievers or anesthesia, and would have the electric currents set on a high. This was extremely painful, and lacked professional ethics. The way ECT is done today has since been evaluated, and doctors are now required to use it in a more ethical way. It is mostly given to those who don’t respond to drug therapy or psychotherapy very well (King, 2017). The procedure is done by the patient going under general anesthesia, where small electric currents pass through the brain, leading to a brief seizure. It causes changes in the brain which seem to reverse symptoms of certain mental illnesses. Today, ECT is administered to approximately 100,000 people a year in psychiatric hospitals or in psychiatric units of general hospitals (ECT and TMS, 2014). One of the illnesses that also gets treated with electroconvulsive therapy is severe depression. In helping with severe depression, ECT comes with good side effects and

Major depression is one of the most commonly known type of depression. It’s been proven that about seven percent of adults in the U.S. have this mental health condition (9 Depressions, 2014). Major depression can be characterized by having at least two weeks of low mood in most situations. This depression affects 350 million people a year (Irwin, 2015). Another type of depression is situational depression. This form of depression is short term and occurs when people are having trouble managing stressful life events. Atypical depression is not a persistent feeling of sadness. There’s a pattern of depressive symptoms a person may have, that can be temporarily improved by a positive event. ECT is mostly used for people with more severe forms of depression. This is because mild forms of depression have a chance of improving with other therapies that don’t involve the lengths taken with ECT. The side effects of ECT are possibly much greater than those with mild depression. Therapies used for mild depression don’t necessarily involve any medical treatments. With severe depression, it is life threatening, so it is more appropriate to use ECT. The possibility of suicide outweighs the effects of ECT, which is why this treatment is appropriate for severe cases. Mild depression can be helped by exercising, yoga, acupuncture, or even just dietary