ECT...Shocking,isnt it....

Note : ECT stands for ELECTRO CONVULSIVE THERAPY...thats in a layman term is electric shock given to mentally ill patients....


For maybe less than 0.6 seconds,his body must have felt the 100 volt jolt...That current from two brazen electrodes attached to his head was adequate to induce a generalised tonic clonic seizure..i.e..all his body muscles contracts simultaneously,he acquires a opisthotonus position and trembles vigorously as one does during a convulsion...His mouth is gagged n 5 strong men pin him down as his iatrogenically induced seizure continues..All this go on for hardly 30 to 40 seconds when he collapses and becomes calm as a sea...Of course during the entire rigorous procedure,he was on anaesthesia and it is most likely he wont remember the ECT or the "SHOCK" at all...



This person is my 35 year old cousin..Following some heavy business losses and stressful family relationships(that u usually expect in joint families) he developed a bipolar disorder(this mental illness is the disease of extremes..i.e at one time he is severely depressed while at other times he is euphoric,hyperactive)...In the last few days he was controllable n excessively violent and had to be chained in order to be brought to the psychiatrist...This doctor seeing him at once decided to give the "SHOCK"...


Now myself being a young budding doctor with bubbling interest in the field of human psychiatry,i didnt like the treatment modality at all...after all ECT is primitive; There are so many wonder drugs available for various mental problems n still why do we have to resort to this SHOCK...Certainly i agree with the human rights people that we are breaking Hippocrates oath that bars us from causing bodily harm...Its not human at all to give someone, all gagged and overpowered ,a more than 100 volted jolt to induce a deadly seizure in the name of therapy....To compound it,there are chances of patient suffering from memory loss,confusion,painful muscle soreness n even death in some extreme conditions....

But then that is one side of the story...certain mental conditions like the one my cousin is suffering from,drugs are most likely to be ineffective... Also he is not co operative n very unlikely that he will take the medicines...And as his aggressiveness has reached maniac proportions, the EL:CTRIC SHOCK becomes the only treatment modality...

As I write this down,my cousin is gearing up for the second dose of SHOCK and i really hope that these SHOCKS help him recover from the shocking state that he recently has been in and normalcy be restored....


Dr.Ayaskant Singh