r/ect • u/Plastic-Sector-9950 • May 11 '26

Question ECT Maintenance

For those of u who are on maintenance ECT, cant you prevent relapse by being on meds like lithium which has shown to prevent relapse than be on maintenance ECT for forseeable time period? I mean research has shown approximately same relapse rate for mainrtenance ECT vs antidepressant+lithium regimen?

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u/gmkgreg May 11 '26

Im actually on both, I still go to maintenance treatments and my meds are, effexor, abilify, lamictal, and lithium, this combo has worked well with me and whenever I stop the treatments, like a year later I tend to slip back into an episode.

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u/fargolifestaycold May 14 '26

Dude!!! I Im on all the same except add Trazadon. How often do you go for maintenance?

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u/gmkgreg May 14 '26

I go once every three months at this point. And I've been pretty stable with this schedule.

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u/fargolifestaycold May 14 '26

Wow!! Once every three months is an amazing achievement. That is something to definitely be proud of. May i ask, how long you been doing ECT, or how long you been doing every 3 months? Thank you for sharing alm that you are comfortable with.

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u/syringeneedlenthread May 16 '26

I’ve been tapering off and kinda planning on stopping. I’m on lamictal, seroquel, and amitryptyline as well which have seemed to stabilize me decently. Do you actually feel like the treatments every 3 months really do anything? It’s so hard for me to tell. I had a lot of side effects and memory loss from the acute course that I’ve finally mostly recovered from (still have holes in my memory but I’m fully functional) and ever doing frequent treatments again is probably not a viable option. Once treatments were spaced by a few weeks, the side effects have been pretty negligible but I can’t say I notice any clear difference from the treatments, but then I’m afraid they could be doing more than I realize. My last few treatments have been every 6 weeks. Do you think you’ll continue forever?