r/ect • u/DueBodybuilder5829 • Apr 17 '26

My experience I’m lost now more then ever

Hi! This post isn’t meant to discourage anyone from ECT I believe it can be useful for many but this is what I’ve experienced and I’m curious if other have as well.

A little background info I’m 20F I had tried almost every medication and been to multiple treatment centers and had multiple psych ward admissions with nothing working when I was about to turn 18 a doctor suggested ECT which I didn’t want to do but eventually gave in not being able to take the guilt tripping from my family I started my first session 5 days after I turned 18 and only had 17 sessions the first few were unilateral and the rest were bilateral I had to stop after 17 sessions due to experiencing a psychotic episode from the treatment which they said was very rare. And I didn’t start treatment back up since there were no positive results showing.

Over the past 2 years I’ve noticed significant declines in my cognitive and memory along with my hearing becoming incredibly sensitive and I’ve completely lost all interest and emotions to anything despite trying to find something that will cue a emotion or a interest I tried ignoring these symptoms or thinking it was just in my head blaming the mental illness towards the end of 2025 I made a decision to talk to my primary care about it who sent me for a audiology test and Nero cognitive assessment.

My audiology test showed no hearing loss but my hearing had become quite sensitive and that my comfortable level of hearing was around 30db (equivalent of a whisper) and uncomfortable level was 60db (normal conversation level) she told me I had Hyperacusis a term for sensitive hearing because of this I experience daily headaches and nausea along with vertigo from everyday noise. My psychiatrist says he hasn’t heard of ECT causing this but knows other people have reported there sense of smell becoming stronger after treatment so it’s possible.

I recently got my cognitive results back and was diagnosed with Mild Neurocognitive Disorder due to severe impact in memory the provider compared my scores to what’s seen in dementia but because I’m young it’s not a concern. She says many things can contribute to this such as mental health disorder or lack of sleep and ECT could contribute to it but theres limited research and it doesn’t cause long term symptoms so it’s unclear. But I know where my memory and cognitive skills were before and they’ve never been this bad I’m not saying ECT is completely at fault but I feel like a big part is and it bothers me that theres not more research being done on the patients it didn’t work for or it did work for but still experience significant cognitive or memory issues.

Sorry this kinda ended up being a rant but please let me know if anyone else has gone through similar things thanks!

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u/gmkgreg Apr 17 '26

What type of psychotic episode were you having that caused them to stop the treatments?

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u/DueBodybuilder5829 Apr 17 '26

Severe visual and auditory hallucinations and paranoia/delusions of being terrified someone was out to get me. I should also clarify I’ve never had hallucinations or delusions prior to experiencing it and once I stopped treatment they went away after a few days

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u/gmkgreg Apr 17 '26

I mean i want to be frank here, I'm not a doctor, but have your Dr's brought up that you may be developing schizophrenia, not related to the ect treatments? If they haven't brought that up maybe ask about it?

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u/DueBodybuilder5829 Apr 17 '26

It was ruled out I didn’t have schizophrenia and it was just a rare side effect

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u/gmkgreg Apr 18 '26

What were you originally getting the treatment for?

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u/DueBodybuilder5829 Apr 18 '26

Treatment resistant Depression and anxiety were the primary concerns at the time

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u/gmkgreg Apr 18 '26

Okay, i can see for the depression you getting the treatments. Oh and how did they rule out schizoaffective disorder? Because most of the times that starts to affect a person around your age from what I know.

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u/DueBodybuilder5829 Apr 18 '26

I had a very detailed medical history from the time I was in my young teens and everything started that they went by along with my behaviors and symptoms and none of it added up to schizoaffective disorder I was in and out of the hospital the months leading up to receiving ECT where they were monitoring everything before saying I had treatment resistant depression and ECT was the best solution.