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Treating Depression with Electroconvulsive Therapy
– Reported, November 07 2013
MIAMI, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — Electroshock therapy was first used in 1938 to induce a therapeutic seizure. Those seizures seemed to reset the brain. Today the treatment is nothing like the Frankenstein depictions in film and television. When medication and hospitalization no longer works for 100,000 psychiatric patients, depression and bipolar disorder are wiped away with electroconvulsive therapy or ECT. The FDA is now looking into the pros and cons of ECT.
What scares us most about ECT is a high voltage of electricity sent directly into a patients brain without any pain meds.
It used to be that people would have a full convulsion and they would break bones from the contracture of the, of the muscles, Michael Hughes, MD, Psychiatrist at University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine, told Ivanhoe.
However, today patients are put under anesthesia and the low dose electricity is safely regulated by the newest machine.
The machine quite dramatically modifies the waveform of the current as it passes through the machine and then gets administered to the central nervous system, Dr. Martin Strassnig, Attending Psychiatrist and Chief, ECT Service, University of Miami, told Ivanhoe.
It changed Barry Wierniks life.
He said, Roni, I dont want to live and I cant get out of bed, Roni Wiernik, Barrys wife, told Ivanhoe.
Barry is bipolar and suffers from severe depression. Newly prescribed maintenance ECT every eight weeks is the only way to keep him from relapsing.
Theres no pain involved. You go under general anesthesia, you wake up within an hour, and its like nothing happened, Barry told Ivanhoe.
I think this is such a wonderful thing because it helped my husband, Roni said.
Harvard trained Psychiatrist Dr. Michael Hughes says ECT could cause some temporary memory loss, soreness, and nausea; but it works and can even now be used during pregnancy, instead of mood enhancing drugs.
Its scary for people to hear about it. When you know about it and see it, it is safe, Dr. Hughes said.
Some states, such as Utah, have tried to outlaw ECT.
However, it is legal and used to treat severe depression and bipolar disorder that is resistant to medication. In fact, two thirds of those patients are women. ECT is covered by insurance as both an inpatient and outpatient procedure.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Lisa Worley
Marketing Director
University of Miami Hospital
305-689-1352
