i got brain damage from electroconvulsive therapy.

I was awake for one of my 14 ECT sessions. It caused the person I was to die and left me completely lost and pretty much useless as a functional human being. I remember it in... too much detail. I feel like something is really wrong with me neurologically, like there's an electrical storm firing on my head all the time. Am I having seizures? What did they do to me? Who do I talk to, how do I find one or pay when I've hardly been able to work since? How do I learn who I am after experiencing death of the self?

I deeply wish I could talk to someone else that's been shocked. I feel like I lost my humanity, like other people can't understand me and I can't relate to them. I feel so alone.

Hi Sue, I typed a reply to you earlier but I don't think it went through. In the mid 90's I had 9 ECT treatments. I had a severe complete burnout from working constant long hours in a high stress work environment managing a very unrealistic high caseload of work-injured clients as well as raising 2 daughters on my own with no help nor support. This burnout completely spent me physically, mentally, emotionally, cognitively as well as actively brought to light trauma symptoms from my childhood abuse I had buried, never dealt with. I was diagnosed with major depression, ptsd, anxiety, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, sleep disorders, low thyroid & disassociative episodes; some more uncommon, not recognized nor accepted well in the medical community back then took longer to get diagnosed (with the help of my own persistence of many hours of research in other countries & finding a physician elsewhere who had that knowledge). For the first few years, I was covered through my work place disability plan as far as income & counselling. My symptoms continued, not being able to work, I had my savings that I used to live on & pay the bills. Eventually that ran out & I had to go on welfare (poverty) & claim bankruptcy for a small amount of debt I couldn't afford to make payments on so all this was a real loss of pride for me. My children (just barely teens; their hardest years) as well now majorly suffered in so many ways; it was like they had lost their mother, the person they knew & could always count on, their strong & only caretaker, their sense of security, the home they knew, monetary level of comfort. I fell apart & so did they to an major extent; our family dynamics & relationships majorly fractyred & affected. No one offered to intervene, support or help us individually nor as a family unit. Now in poverty my only choice was to seek help from a psychiatrist, reluctantly. He denied me counselling, overdrugging me majorly with too many kinds of meds, for a long time period, some meds. for psychiatric diagnosis's I didn't have. With the overdrugging, I was constantly drooling at the mouth, seeing things not there, at.times getting lost with a blank mind for long periods, constant heavy sleeping states for which he chastised me when sleeping in for morning appointments (I had to take transit buses too to get there). I ended up sicker after going to him. Nothing he did seemed to help my depression so he recommended ECT treatments stating they do not cause any long-term memory nor cognitive impairment. Many months after my ECT's I tried to convince this psychiatrist that these treatments seemed to majorly increased my problems with cognitive & memory issues but he didn't believe me. I was afraid I would be cut off disability if I stopped seeing him & of course not thinking clearly with a cloudy brain. He still had me overdrugged & sent me for some type of academic-IQ testing that I'd been asking for done by a psychologist done over a 2 day period (which I never remembered having done). He told me my I had an extremely low IQ functioning at a borderline mental retardation level (his exact words) & he said that I had this low IQ before I had got sick & this was the cause of my burnout because of the stress of not being smart enough to do my job . Shocked, I told him I functioned at a high academic level in life & at my jobs successfully with promotions & I had the paperwork to prove it. I then took my chances & stopped seeing him, as well as majorly reducing or stopping the medications he had me on. I eventually got my medical file from his office & once reading it, I felt so angry with all the inappropriate & incorrect unsupported diagnosis's, negative labels & comments he had written & I saw the psycologist's written concerns at the time he was conducting the psy. IQ. academic testing in me that I was drooling at the mouth, appeared to be heavily medicated & of my disassociative episodes. Just unbelievable. He gets paid a very high income to abuse his patients making them sicker & So Wrong, as 20+ years later I still suffer with major depression (on an anti-depressant) & cognitive impairment of short & long-term memory loss, problems with confused, fragmented thinking, responding, understanding, communicating, learning, retaining, slowed functioning, spacing out with major time planning difficulties, late or missed appointments & functions no matter how hard I try to plan my time leaving people mad at me even though they are aware of my medical issues; balance problems & not walking straight; spacial awareness difficulty, clumbsiness, not remembering important or fun things I just did or an enjoyable movie, poor sense of direction & trouble with figuring out where things are around me when out & about (getting my bearings). The medical community that I've dealt with don't seem to accept my cognitive problems as relating to ECT nor take me seriously nor seen to care enough to refer me for neuropsychology testing nor anything else. I've felt like I have a true brain injury without the hit in the head & a childlike functioning mind in an adult body. And, without that hit in the head, I am not taken seriously. I feel so angry, powerless, stuck, unable to get better & move beyond my symptoms & limitations that keep me in poverty & sick. I have found the government here, the medical community, society, employers, landlords renting their properties, & even the ones closest to you like family or friends (if any anymore) walk away, criticise, have little patience nor tolerance, take it personally like you don't care enough, don't offer help, support nor understand or care or really want to with having these limitations. I feel it is criminal, unethical & immoral concerning how my psychiatrist & alike & the government here treat mentally ill people. Shame. It is refreshing to have run across your discussion online site on this topic as I so agree ECT causes brain damage . I applaud you for speaking out. I've never heard of his book but I intend to find it to read. Also, I'd be interested in viewing any documentaries or media episodes etc on this if you can share how I do that? Thank-you so much to all here.

Hi Sue

My name is Sandi. From 2009-2013 I endured approx 140 ECT treatments. Some unilateral & some bilateral. 12 were voluntary but the rest were forced under the Mental Health Act which my family and I fought.

We definitely noticed the memory loss early on but was were told it would improve. Not only did it not improve, It worsened. In time I didnt recognise my own daughter which was so distressing for her. We noticed my cognitive ability was quite badly affected. Sadly this has persisted and my neuropsychologist feels it is akin to having early onset dementia. I have always been a very active mentally alert and competent woman working manager in a disability support service. Despite my employers every effort to keep me working, I resigned from my job in 2013. I struggle with so many domains of life.

My adult daughter tries to help but my needs are more than she can cope with. I find learning new things very difficult especially things like reading and following instructions, using the internet/media, phone, sequencing, telling time/date, paying bills, managing medication, as well as coping with some emotions like anger, frustration & excitment etc.

Because my symptoms are pervasive & persistent I cannot work. I do receive a pension but do not qualify for NDIS to recieve the support I need to just maintain the skills I still have. I feel so cheated!

Hi Sue my friend, a former nurse had ECT several times many years ago for deep depression. He now has trouble forming sentences, can’t spell and has anger issues . He is very “black and white”  in his reasoning and sometimes seems almost child like. He is insistent on having his own way and lacks empathy or much insight. I noticed these are like frontal lobe damage issues. He was quite depressed when I met him but Tryptophan has helped a lot. It seems to me he has cognitive damage from the ECT. Can you tell me any more about this?  

Please see the New discussion group I started ELECTROCONVULSIVE THERAPY.

I had a large number of ECTs back in the 1970s. I have always searched to discover who brought me back from the OTHER SIDE . As the decades passed my theories changed.

As you may know immediately after the electricity travels through your frontal lobes your brain FLATLINES for about 45 seconds. During this time YOU ARE BRAIN DEAD. Something or someone brings your soul back to your brain.

Since everything but your brain is still functioning at the end of the 45 seconds reanimation is easy (at least it occured everytime for me),

As you may also know, for reasons the doctors do not know; the face of a person for those first 45seconds displayes the expression of EXTREME PAIN. It is worse than just about any other event causes a human face to express, yet the Shock Docs say the patient feels no pain at all. Indeed after every ETC when I woke up I could not remember any pain . Of course I could not remember ANYTHING!

One thing occured everytime I was waking up from ECT. My mother would be calling my name from the door to the little treatment room . David.... David.....David..... My first thught was not "WHO IS DAVID?" or "AM I DAVID?" or even "WHO AM I?" My first thought ALWAYS WAS>>>>>>>>>>: "WHAT AM I????"

What d.oes this suggest? SOMEONE OR SOMETHING USHERED BACK WITH ME FROM WHERE EVER THE SHOCK HAD KNOCKED MY SOUL (ESSENCE, WHATEVER YOU CALL IT). This is what the Buzz about the CIA using ECT in the 1960s and 1970s to program a human has hinted at. I do not know anything about that and some things on the WWW are jokes. DRR

Hello again ; in regard to the loss of memory and the inability to perform tasks that require concentration of the mind on a specific thing, i developed a technique to get around this problem which had developed as a side effect of my ECT treatments. I produced a METHOD for any task; by writing out in a listed format, steps to do, and memorized the list .

With this technique, my mind could wonder all over the place and it would not be noticed. My work would be completed as if I was a NORMAL human and not one DAMAGED BY ECT.

This same idea worked for taking college classes while receiving ECT. Taking copious notes from lectures and memorizing said notes, I was able to maintain a "B" average. As to the "RED ELECTRODE MARKS" , there was class in a History of the USA where I had to take a test only a few hours after an ECT treatment. Those MARKS were evident . Everyone was busy with the test and did not notice the marks.

I have noticed what might be the result of ECT causing a sort of "SPLINTEING" of the frontal lobes into what might be visulized as "KINDLING or TINDER_. I have trouble focusing my thoughts on a single thing. My thought patterns are defocused. I see the BIG PICTURE and often get lost in conversations because of trying to explain and as it were PAINT THE WHOLE PICTURE of something that those around me can only take in and grasp as a LINEAR presentation . They cannot follow my TANGENTIAL presentation in which I try to paint a whole picture instead of just a small part of the canvas.

Something to additionally consider: WHAT TYPE OF SHOCK MACHINE WAS USED ON YOU???

DRR

r=ect. at 18 i was munchasuen by proxy. my father a mentally ill md. prior to this iw as honors in art school had bulimia i diagnose and cure alone and art school not medical. my father? dysfunctional. angry food addicted came from ignorant and alchol and drug family sister and her children were drugs.. alchol. i had this issue got over it and was healthy. outdoors art and sports.

my father did a terrible thing to try to keep me from being an artist. some 39 years later or so, it might finally got his wish and to induce and get a dr to diagnose me with anythign to keep me from school turned hysteria and a fake mental illness diagnosis put on me.. which lead for me to never be treated or remove from MSBP.

i suffered CPTSD from this and ran and suffered tragic life and left a vulnerable adult who worked one to two months summer then m life was a turn from this easy and normal recovery and healthy alone without drs to madnness and confusion trauma and drama. my world torn apart and drs tossing ECT at people like candy. they did not care if it was needed or not. my father and mother were self convince to not face what he did to have me mentally ill was easier . i was lead to this and a tragic situation which left me traumatize toss around at 18 and to sick drs using this for money.

i was coerced threaten if i did not do this is be sent to worse place than hell where i was. in another private place i was drag to off a fake diagnosis an insurance some Nazi like dr was using it on anyone. now i was being force to this and i was given 6 before something in me not beaten down by trauma said to stop and i ate chicken bones to not be able to get it. then i called a lawyer. who stopped and said i could refuse.. i did. after this one time i began to change and suffer . throwing up in a garbage pail and my life feeling i was raped and brain means that something had to be so painful damage to make u puke . my personality change and along with all trauma, i began to suffer the effects mentally of a damage life..

my father was mentally ill and abuse and doing insane things out of his sickness passed the illness to me or was meant to . i would suffer 11 long years of abuse torture and not being removed from this and ran into streets where i suffered and had to try to cope with it and to survive and was a victim of some kind of hell attacks on me and abuse. then i put one foot out of it and escape the hell and walked away from what they wanted me to be back into who i was before i lost me. then 24 years of my rising up and trying to deal with all kinds of neurological issues and ptsd and taking it to top. autism and pains in head , and something damage that i ahd to compensate for all time. i did not want to think about what happen to me but not until i cut off family who wanted me to be this lie and drs did i make a right move forward. i wanted ideal for a dr to do this but never did. so i was left to do it alone and i was a good dr. from time i was less than 15 years old..

i took my story and healing to levels of regain speech and other and to healing until 4 years ago . past list of abusers i regain talent and other and worked hard. at one point because i was constantly traumatized my life could not heal until i removed threats. and walked into a job trusting god who was there still some how and i began to recover . ideally a dr should have remove me and my father should been removed from me and others and him treated. i did my work of ptsd alone. i was going all way up, before i was intentionally induce what someone might wanted to reproduce things in my life and this time take me down with it. a very evil game to induce damage to my brain and reverse my miracle to heal and function, was induce on me four years ago by some abusers, and remove god and any means for me to heal. leaving me to suffer and induce a stroke or lobotomy's effect aggravate my healed damage and send me to depression by induce fatal brain damage mind erasing and to induce a break down and rape trauma on me to dose me with fatal to induce mental illness because no matter what persons did to me i kept keep healthy and get up. i was deprived abused tortured and i refused to break so they helped it along by cheat and removed part of my function and induce extremes on me and i went instantly to death and living hell and my 24 years of very artistic restoration of my life, began to reverse with some punks then induce torture on me and make me suffer and i was again a hostage of torture abuse and people. this time they induce damage in part of my brain that has to do with allow intelligent function and speech and life and basics and i began to die. i began to die and suffer and was left and am not a walking lobotomy's and catatonic and a sad state . i got to dr holding off my fate using repetition tactics of stroke victims and they did not remove me and stabilize and protect me but left me and forced me into streets and to reverse my progres as a person and talent an remove my life. pushig me and others pushing me down to get even with me for surviving them. i am now the opposite of who i was. i also ahve all the symptoms of brain damage of the woman. i suffered extreme brain damage and persons began to attack me as i had no defenses and no function and if dr had remove me and given me means to heal with my super effort to not lose it and not let devil have my soul i might outwit him and them again. instead i was damage and induce strokes on me and left in sick hard places not places to heal with someone sit and wait for me to die. not tell drs i was in distress and being mugged raped and damage.. with a sister who might be envious of me artisticly and a said story and my life turned to hell from a bright story of self recovery. i had issues where i could not learn and autism serizurs and onset of musculature issues. in time i removed myself to recover and i took 11 years of torture abuse. i had stil some lingering neuro and stroke like conditions. i felt if i worked hard i could over come and persons watching me to antichrist me.. now i suffer from fatal forms of what i overcome and not one person stopped it. if someone had felt for me and wanted to prevent me from lose talent and be a victim again. but instead they left me to suffer and abuse me. shut me up for what i saw and left me.. i did suffer also all of above and got better. until i was traumatized again. this is not a chronic thing. if ur leg is broken, it heals if a person comes along and found out it was broken and healed and break it again is not chronic. chronic is only when someone is not given means to heal.. my brain in three and half years awas damage and broken over and over and over. if i put up a fight to show life i was hit again and left in deep trauma and drs not care to much . until i have no sign of intelligence no music also , no sense,visual damage blind and senseless. and articulation and intelligence damage.

Thanks for speaking out about your experience. I'm not even close to the gregarious person I was before. I have a day here or there where I can have hope and have fleeting moments of my brain back but it doesn't last. All my medical team work for the same major university and cover each others backs. My experience is that psychiatrists have more power and influence over anyone else and I'm stuck with life long brain cell damage. I see no hope but to try my best each day and try to move on from a procedure that made me much worse overall with no options.

My family Dr has seen this before but he can't speak out. Are the anything special i can do. Going to a Nero psychiatrist sounds nice but they are in the same group and i can't afford to go out of network. Do you have any words if advice for this US injured patient?

I hope you're still answering threads and successful in your new life! Thank you for the thread.