Throughout centuries, scientists have discovered new and improved ways of curing certain types of

Electroshock therapy is the process of electroshocking the brain of a human, this a process that takes multiple sessions (CBS News). ECT caused critical seizures. Doctors used this method to cure of reduce schizophrenia. Electroshock therapy was performed daily, it was known referred to as “The shock of the day” (D’Antonio). Doctors saw ECT as a easy and fast way to cure a patient.

Still today it is not known why ECT works but it seems to cause changes in brain chemistry that can quickly reverse symptoms of certain mental illnesses. It is also said that the shock literally shocks the person out of their illness as it is regarded as a punishment for the inappropriate behaviour. Another explanation is that the associated memory loss following shock allows the person to start afresh. They literally ‘forget’ they were suffering from a mental illness. Created in +1934 by Hungarian neuropsychiatrist Ladislas Meduna, [11]. However, ECT was not introduced in England until 1939 when Lothar Kalinowsky, observed the treatment administered in Italy and decided to use it in England due to its promising results. During this time high doses of electricity were administered without anaesthesia and muscle relaxations. This lead to memory loss, fractured bones and other serious side effects, which lead to, much of the stigma attached to ECT, because of these early treatments [12]. ECT is a treatment that is still used today, however much less brutally than in the 1930s.

What remains unknown is why electroconvulsive therapy is effective. A plethora of studies show the neurochemical correlates of this treatment and its relation to the anti-depressant effect, yet none are conclusive. Richard Abrams has studied ECT for years and discusses a wide variety of reasons for its effectiveness in his revised edition of Electroconvulsive Therapy. For a person who has studied this treatment for 50 years, he concludes

When medication fails to relax the symptoms of mental illness, there are other options that are tried. Brain stimulation techniques such as electroconvulsive therapy, for example, can be used to treat illnesses that have not responded to standard treatments. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has been used to treat psychiatric patients since the late 1938. The main reason for ECT treatments in North America and Europe were to treat mood disorders (bipolar depression, and unipolar depression) and schizophrenia (Pitidhammabhorn et al. 5). Milos Forman’s unrealistic portrayal of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest negatively shaped the general public’s perceptions of this medical procedure. As a result, many unenlightened

The article “Jumper Cables for the Mind”, written by Dan Hurley, concerns a solution to improving the human mind by sending small amounts of electrical currents to the brain. The author undergoes the experiment in which he is constantly receiving electrical currents to the brain for 10 minutes. After each time he received the electrical experiment Hurley would be put in front of a screen and have a minimum amount of time to hit the correct key that is shown of the screen. The treatment is said to be able to increase the brain function and help people focus, learn new materials, and reduce the risk of strokes. The author is trying to push the experiment, so that it can be in full effect, but the FDA doesn’t approve of the experiment and deems it to have dangerous effects if done wrong.

Prior to this assignment, my feelings from electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) solely came from images in the media. Two instances that stand out to me is the portrayal of ECT in an episode of "American Horror Story: Asylum" and from the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Although I realize media is not an accurate representation of reality, these scenes stood out to me due to the intense, emotional display of ECT's effects through the patient's eyes. Despite the unrealistic depiction of ECT, one accurate aspect of the scenes is that ECT was commonly used during the 1960s-1970s to improve mental disturbances and a variety of psychological disorders. I think the reason these scenes stood out to me was that ECT was implemented without the patient's informed consent or agreement upon the treatment regimen, utilized as a way to subdue patients into compliance. Contrary to modern use of ECT, this type of therapy was used as a form of punishment, implemented

When ECT “hit” the medical scene in the 40s and 50s, it was unsafe and gruesome (Dahl, 2008). Treatment was often performed while the patient was awake, and their convulsions were not controlled at all – they were often strong enough to break bones. ECT hit its peak in the 1960s when three tenths of a million US citizens underwent the therapy yearly (Dahl, 2008). At that point, however, it was still “absolutely a cruel procedure” (Dahl, 2008). It is still yet to recover from its ghastly past, the general public still thinks of ECT as how it was portrayed in One Flew Over the Coocoo's Nest, and more recently, Requiem for a Dream (Fitzgerald, 2011). A psychiatrist summed up the current status of ECT very well saying, “Quite frankly, the stigma pushes people away from it, and it pushes some psychiatrists away from even recommending ECT, but most of the stigma related to ECT really is related to misconception” (Dahl, 2008).

After researching electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), I have decided that if a close family member or even myself were severely depressed I would not support the use of ECT. Electroconvulsive therapy consists of an electrical shock, which is used to produce a seizure. Many people experience seizures due to some other type of illness or illnesses, and in these cases there is medicine taken in order to prevent these occurrences. In deciding my opinion on the topic of ECT I asked myself would I want to put myself or a loved one through what others are trying to avoid; a seizure. Although ECT has proven to be effective in some cases of depression, it has many risk factors involved and it does not ensure a lifetime with out the reoccurrence of

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a treatment for severe mental illness in which the brain is stimulated with a strong electrical current which induces a seizure. The seizure rearranges the brain's neurochemistry and results in an elevation of mood. This essay asks: Is ECT any safer and more effective in treating mood disorders than drug therapies? This treatment has a controversial history ever since it was first introduced in 1938. I intend to argue that electroconvulsive therapy is indeed a safe treatment of mental disorders when other treatments have failed. Due to the development of safer and less traumatic ways of administering ECT, the treatment has made a comeback, is greatly used, and proves to be

Since electroconvulsive therapy is not as common as it used to be, many studies are from the late 1900s, early 2000s. Abraham and Kulhara (1987) looked at the effectiveness of electroconvulsive therapy and stimulated electroconvulsive therapy in patients with schizophrenia who were a part of an out-patient department. This was a double-blind study and in order for patients to be a part of this study, they had to meet the diagnosis for schizophrenia,

Electroconvulsive therapy- is a procedure, done under general anesthesia, in which small electric currents are passed through the brain, intentionally triggering a brief seizure. ECT seems to cause changes in brain chemistry that can quickly reverse symptoms of certain mental illnesses ("Lithium, benzodiazepines," 1992)

The groundwork for the development of electroshock therapy was laid in 1935, when a Budapest psychiatrist, Von Meduna, observed that

The term “stem cell” was first used in scientific literature in 1868 by a German biologist Ernst Haeckel to describe a fertilized egg that becomes an organism.3 Haeckel also used the

The Electroshock Therapy (ECT) and Lobotomy are also serious treatments used to punish who do not obey the Big Nurse’s order. The concept of ECT is that electricity passes through patient’s brain in order to make him feel the pain and to threat other patients in hospital. According to Mayo Clinic, “ECT often works when other treatments are unsuccessful […] leading to memory loss, fractured bones and other serious side effects”(Mayo Clinic). An Acute named Ellis become paralyzed after receiving ECT, just because he wants to have his own activity. He is diagnosed as a psychopath by the Big Nurse and needs a treatment immediately. His whole body disabled and his brain is not clear so that he cannot speak and do not have any feeling at all. The Chief Bromden is another victim of ECT. He receives more than two hundred ECT, which damages his brain and his body. Harding describes ECT humorously that, “it is quite simple, quick and nearly painless […] Those fortunate souls in there are being given a free trip to the moon”(Kesey 107). However, the results of ECT are more than that. The serious effects are too serious because it damages the

For the purpose of this assignment the experience of attending Electro-Convulsive Therapy will be discussed. It will include rationale for the procedure, an account of the procedure and the student nurses reflection on the experience using Gibbs’ model of reflection (Jasper 2003). Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a medical treatment for severe mental illness in which a small, carefully controlled amount of electricity is introduced into the brain. This electrical stimulation, used in conjunction with anaesthesia and muscle relaxant medications, produces a mild generalised seizure or convulsion (Mankad et al 2010).