I found this article interesting. It’s about a guy who seems very functional and doing well in life, but apparently he found depression to be problem. He tried antidepressants but they didn’t help him. So he eventually resorted to ECT, electroconvulsive therapy. It’s where an electrical current is passed through the brain. Apparently this guy found it helpful and it has improved his life. He’s written a book about his ECT experiences and his subsequent improvements.
I guess I found it interesting because I’ve been on various psychiatric medications, and I’ve never liked them, but for a long time I’ve thought “it could be worse, I could have ended up having ECT”, since I see ECT as something to be feared, I suppose. I think doctors don’t really know how it works, but some patients do report improvements after having it.
Maybe it would be good to see more articles like this one in mainstream media outlets (this article is from The Guardian which is a mainstream newspaper in the UK). There’s clearly still a gigantic stigma around mental health, but articles like this, where mental health patients talk about their experiences, probably help to break down the stigma.
Doctors don’t fully understand how antidepressants work either.
Maybe we shouldn’t judge patients so much for resorting to treatments. The guy who is the subject of the article also wrote this article (archive link here) and he says he tried multiple kinds of antidepressants before resorting to ECT.
Maybe it’s a reflection of the human desire to keep going and keep trying things when every avenue seems to have been exhausted. It sort of reminds me of articles I’ve read (like this one) about people who have broken the law to get cannabis-based medications to treat epilepsy, when other medications haven’t worked. Someone like that might not want to break the law, but they feel it’s the only way they can get a treatment that works, even if that treatment has drawbacks.