Electroconvulsive Therapy Essay

Robert Kargher

Electroconvulsive therapy does it really work?
Since its start of use in 1938, electroconvulsive therapy has been in much debate over its practice and effectiveness. Its inventor ladislas Meduna, suggested that by “changing the chemical composition of the brain” through ECT we could effectively treat schizophrenia. As he did not realize that these induced seizures had a lot of major physiological consequences. Were these really psychological changes or were they a combination of biochemical induced changes that had caused some type of neurological
As early as the 1920’s one of the first convulsion therapy using insulin was administered on schizophrenic patients. Patients were injected with insulin to induce a coma (sometimes it induced convulsions), than they would inject glucose to wake them up. Even though it had high risk it outweighed the positive benefits it had on the patient. Another drug Metrazol, which was originally used for heart patients, also induced convulsion that appeared to reduce or eliminate a patients’ agitation and psychoses. When electroconvulsive therapy was developed in the late 1930’s by the two Italian psychiatrists, it wasn’t deemed better than the insulin method but was much easier than insulin to administer and better tolerated than metrazol. Thus ECT was becoming the choice over the chemical methods of inducing convulsion in
The only real conclusive things are its memory loss factors with other cognitive loss and the high relapse factor. I don’t it is any more barbaric than simply taking other medications that also impair other functions of the body plus all its side effects. The point is we have choices for each individual case and we should learn as much as we can from each patient and try determine the best therapy that last the longest with as little adverse side effects with best possible