Posted by LostBoyinNC1 on July 29, 2002, at 23:25:15
In reply to Re: MAOI Wowie!, posted by cybercafe on July 29, 2002, at 22:25:44
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> > What convinced me it was safe was talking to others offline who have actually had ECT. And
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> where did you meet other patients in Real Life (tm) .... i find most non-internet savy patients to be lacking self-awareness and aggressiveness...Different places. An offline real world support group I go to sometimes. Met a few people there who had ECT. I know a woman here in NC who had it three times and recently met her offline and she didnt seem fucked up at all. Not one bit. She seemed very together mentally and like I said, she had ECT three times. And she had it back in the sixties, even though she did admit to me she has huge memory blocks from the sixties era ECT's. She also saw people getting insulin shock treatment in the sixties when she was getting ECT. Scary.
Finally, I met some people at Duke psychiatry who had it. Some of them return once a month to get shocked outpatient for maintence and swear by it. Of course Duke has one of the best ECT units in North America.
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> > IN the old version of ECT, when it developed its evil reputation, patients were not artificially oxygenated and tended to hold their breath for minutes at a time during the seizure.
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> ... yeah my father is very seriously fucked up... i mean ultraradian type I bipolar (cycles several times a day) ... narcissistic aggressive intermittant explosive rage several times a day... but he would never consider getting help because when he had ECT they didn't bother to wait for the anaesthetic to take effect... and apparently being awake and not being able to breathe for 2 min is quite horrible... i'm like "dude, why don't you take lamictal or valporate instead of your 1960s antipsychotic, which doesn't work well and has major side effects" but he is terrified of letting his doc have even the slightest hint their might be a problem in case he ends up getting ECT again....
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> > However with the modern form of ECT, all of your bodily functions are closely monitored via machines and you are artificially oxygenated.
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> didn't they have that technology in the 60s?nah, they didnt have shit in the sixties. They didnt know MAOIs could cause hypertensive crisises back then. They didnt even have an MAOI diet back then. They were still doing lobotomies and insulin shock in the sixties and still believed in Freud. Back then if you got depression or schizophrenia they thought it was cause you were raised shitty and blamed it on you and your family...Freud crap. Back then nobody gave a flying fuck about the mentally ill. They were still using ECT back in the sixties for "behavioral control" and didnt restrict its use for just severe mood disorders like they do now.
Torrey Fuller was the guy who came up with the idea that schizophrenia is a brain disease in the early seventies. And that was the beginning of the end of the Freudians, thank God.
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> >of oxygen to your brain even during the grand mal seizure. This prevents the oxygen deprivation induced brain damage which occurred in the primitive forms of ECT used in the forties,
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> hmmmmm... do epileptics stop breathing when they have seizures too?I dont know the answer to that question.
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> > Reading about ECT convinced me the modern form of it, providing it is done correctly and you are properly oxygenated is safe. Definitely safer than MAOIs. Even though Im on Parnate, I still view ECT as medically safer than MAOI therapy.
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> hey if other people go without oxygen for minutes and still come out alright i'm sure we'd do alright...
>yeah, but you dont want to hold your breath more than a minute. I feel uncomfortable as hell holding my breath thirty seconds. Two minutes and you get brain damage. Trust me, one of the most important things in safe, successful ECT is being properly oxygenated the entire time.
poster:LostBoyinNC1
thread:114046
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020725/msgs/114279.html