That look in my eyes...

Well, in reading about electroconvulsive therapy on Wikipedia (I've read a couple books about it too, mostly very clinical, "pro"-ECT types), I've discovered a significant number of people not only don't respond favorably, like with any treatment for major depression, but that severe side effects like those I've experienced are not uncommon by any means. They always advertise the successes, but last time I went off my Effexor I only got temporarily confused, sick, and depressed, and was able to go right back on it to reverse those withdrawal effects and restore my baseline state within a day or two. With ECT, you take a risk that you might never be the same. To wit:

Individual negative depictions

Negative effects of ECT have been reported by noteworthy individuals.

Ernest Hemingway, American author, committed suicide shortly after ECT at the Menninger Clinic in 1961. He is reported to have said to his biographer, "Well, what is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient...."

In 2005, "Peggy S. Salters, 60, sued Palmetto Baptist Medical Center in Columbia, as well as the three doctors responsible for her care. As the result of an intensive course of outpatient ECT in 2000, she lost all memories of the past 30 years of her life, including all memories of her husband of three decades, now deceased, and the births of her three children. Ms. Salters held a Masters of Science in nursing and had a long career as a psychiatric nurse, but lost her knowledge of nursing skills and was unable to return to work after ECT." The jury awarded Salters $635,177 in compensation for her inability to work.

Registered nurse Barbara C. Cody reports in a letter to the Washington Post that her life was forever changed by 13 outpatient ECTs she received in 1983. "Shock 'therapy' totally and permanently disabled me. EEGs [electroencephalograms] verify the extensive damage shock did to my brain. Fifteen to 20 years of my life were simply erased; only small bits and pieces have returned. I was also left with short-term memory impairment and serious cognitive deficits. Shock "therapy" took my past, my college education, my musical abilities, even the knowledge that my children were, in fact, my children. I call ECT a rape of the soul."

In 2007, a judge canceled a two year old court order that allowed the involuntary electroshock of Simone D., a psychiatric patient at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in the state of New York. Although Simone spoke only Spanish, she rarely received access to staff fluent in her language. Simone previously had 200 electroshocks. However, she communicated that she did not want more electroshock. Simone stated, "Electroshock causes more pain. I suffer more from shock treatment!"

In 2008, David Tarloff, a psychiatric patient who had received electroshock, assaulted two therapists in the city of New York. Tarloff injured one therapist and murdered the other. One of the therapists was Kent Shinbach, a psychiatrist who had an interest in electroconvulsive therapy. "It is not clear whether Dr. Shinbach played any role in Mr. Tarloff's shock therapy". However, Tarloff told investigators that Shinbach had given Tarloff psychiatric treatment at a psychiatric facility initially in 1991.

In an interview with "Houston Chronicle" in 1996, Melissa Holliday, a former extra on "Baywatch" and model for "Playboy" stated the ECT she received in 1995, "ruined her life". She went on to state, "I've been through a rape, and electroshock therapy is worse. If you haven't gone through it, I can't explain it."

Liz Spikol the senior contributing editor of Philadelphia Weekly, wrote of her ECT in 1996, "Not only was the ECT ineffective, it was incredibly damaging to my cognitive functioning and memory. But sometimes it's hard to be sure of yourself when everyone "credible"—scientists, ECT docs, researchers—are telling you that your reality isn't real. How many times have I been told my memory loss wasn't due to ECT but to depression? How many times have I been told that, like a lot of other consumers, I must be perceiving this incorrectly? How many times have people told me that my feelings of trauma related to the ECT are misplaced and unusual? It's as if I was raped and people kept telling me not to be upset—that it wasn't that bad."

Noteworthy is that these cases, apart from Hemmingway's, are mostly from this decade, in this age of the supposedly new, "safe" version of the treatment. Don't even mention Frances Farmer or Sylvia Plath or any of the other multitude of people who have had negative (read: horrible) experiences with ECT in the past, in "the bad old days." 

I encourage you to read this page and others like it, and to look carefully at some of the criticisms leveled at the procedure and some of the regulations or statements made by regulation bodies, and see if you can't spot a few contradictions and ridiculous, unfounded statements about its safety.

Personally I think it ought to be banned.