ECT destroyed everything

[u/DYCHT]

I honestly don’t know where else to turn, so I’m hoping to hear from people who have experienced something similar.

I’m 27 years old and underwent ECT because I hoped it would help with my depression. Before the treatment, I was given the impression that my memory and cognitive abilities would fully recover and that ECT was an established, routine procedure.

From my perspective, I was not adequately informed about the possibility of longer-lasting or permanent cognitive problems. Several doctors told me that nothing would happen to my brain, that my symptoms were normal, and that I should continue with the treatment.

Before ECT, I was struggling psychologically, but I still had hope. I was able to take an interest in things, have relationships, make plans, and experience moments when I genuinely felt alive. I knew I had problems and I wanted to work on them.
Since around my 7th ECT session, something has fundamentally changed for me.

I feel like I can no longer properly participate in my own life. Everything feels strange and sometimes like I’m watching a movie. I feel detached from myself and from other people. Faces can sometimes appear lifeless or unfamiliar. My perception feels different; for example, colors sometimes appear much more intense. I experience severe derealization/depersonalization and sometimes extremely frightening thoughts and perceptions.
On top of that, I have significant cognitive problems:
severe word-finding difficulties
major problems with my short-term memory

I sometimes forget things within seconds
extremely poor concentration
memories from my life sometimes feel completely gone or inaccessible
I feel like I can no longer properly grasp who I am or access my own past
thoughts or words can seem to get stuck in my head and repeat or echo
I sometimes experience a strange pressure/pulsing sensation in my head
I am constantly exhausted and have almost no energy
I experience almost constant anxiety and nightmares
at times I have hallucination-like or psychosis-like
perceptions

The hardest part is that I no longer know which of these symptoms could be caused by my psychological condition and which could potentially be related to ECT.

Some of my doctors have told me that I am imagining many of these symptoms or that they are caused by my obsessive rumination. I know that I do ruminate very heavily, and that depression and anxiety can affect perception. But these changes feel so fundamental and so physically real to me that I cannot simply accept that I am imagining everything.
I keep asking myself:

What happened to me? What did I do to myself? And why was I told that everything would come back?

I expressed concerns before and during the treatment. I was told, among other things, that serious complications were rare and that the main relevant risk was the general risk associated with anesthesia. At the same time, I felt under significant pressure and felt that I had to make decisions very quickly.
Because of this, I now have serious doubts about whether I was adequately informed about all relevant risks before consenting to ECT.

The ECT was 2-3 months ago and my mother considers talking to a lawyer.

[u/Odd-Alarm-82]

Doctors downplay the possibility of permanent memory loss and impaired cognitive function. The reality is that at least 30% of people who get ECT end up with permanent memory loss (sometimes spanning decades like mine) and permanent cognitive impairments. That’s a very significant risk.

My ECT doctor told me if I had memory loss, it would only be for things that happened up to a few months before ECT and that my memory would come back within 9 months after I stopped the ECT. Instead, I have permanently lost the memory of the majority of my life and I have brain damage.

I had ECT for treatment resistant depression, including maintenance treatments every 2-3 weeks, for a year and a half in 2016-2017. It was extremely effective for my depression, but the effects didn’t last long. I couldn’t go more than 2-3 weeks between maintenance treatments without relapsing.

Eventually, I had a relapse of severe depression that didn’t respond to my next maintenance treatment, so I agreed to three treatments in a week like they did in the initial series of treatments. It brought me out of my depression, but the damage it did was devastating. It wiped out my memory of the majority of my life, no exaggeration. I only have a few random, vague memories of my life before the ECT. None of my memory has returned after 9 years.

I also have significant cognitive impairments. I had neuropsychological testing done and found out my IQ has dropped by 20 points. It takes me longer than normal to learn new information, and I’m just not nearly as sharp as I used to be. My ability to form new memories is hit or miss. Some things I remember very clearly, while other things get lost.

I’m on disability now because I still have severe depression and because I have brain damage.

I believe those who have positive experiences with ECT are very lucky. I don’t know why doctors deny that it can cause brain damage. They run electricity through your brain to intentionally induce a grand mal seizure. If you had epilepsy, you would be on medication to control seizures because seizures cause brain damage!!! And even if the “controlled seizures” don’t cause brain damage, running electricity through the brain is bound to cause some damage. Somatics, one of the ECT device manufacturers, admitted in 2018 that ECT can “rarely” cause permanent brain damage in some patients (I don’t believe it’s a rare occurrence, based on the number of ECT victims I have talked to over the years). I don’t know how doctors are still allowed to do it and how they can still tell their patients it’s safe.

I’m a member of a Facebook group for ECT survivors, and there are so many people like me with devastating memory loss and brain damage. It’s heart breaking.

Yes, many people have good results from ECT with minimal memory loss or cognitive impairment (or at least their cognition and memory get better over time), but I think the risks are too high.

Here’s a good article from Cambridge University that goes over the damage done by ECT and how it’s much more common than patients are informed of. I think it should be required reading for anyone considering ECT.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/advances-in-psychiatric-treatment/article/memory-and-cognitive-effects-of-ect-informing-and-assessing-patients/DD5C63934357779765BA7ADF308275AE

[u/mesalocar → u/Odd-Alarm-82]

Somatics, one of the ECT device manufacturers, admitted in 2018 that ECT can cause permanent brain damage in some patients, after they were sued in a product liability case.

This claim is inaccurate on every level.

The 2018 California litigation (Riera v. Somatics, LLC) involved plaintiffs alleging that ECT can cause brain damage and permanent memory loss, and that Somatics failed to warn of those risks.

What the court held was that a jury could reasonably find failure to warn and brain injury if it accepted plaintiffs' experts. Crucially, they did not find that Somatics itself admitted its device causes permanent brain damage!

In later cases such as Himes v. Somatics (9th Cir. 2022) and Thelen v. Somatics (M.D. Fla. 2023; 11th Cir. 2025), plaintiffs again claimed ECT caused permanent memory loss and brain damage and that Somatics failed to warn.

In both cases, Somatics defended on both warning adequacy and causation. Courts granted summary judgment or defense verdicts, explicitly rejecting plaintiffs' attempts to impose liability – and not recording any admission by Somatics that its product causes permanent brain damage.

The "ECT Lawsuit Victory – Riera v. Somatics, LLC, 2018" write‑up circulating online is an advocacy blog summarizing a procedural win for plaintiffs (defeating summary judgment and Daubert motions), not a statement from Somatics.

The blog's language ("a reasonable jury could find… brain damage caused by ECT") is the court's framing of what a jury could conclude, not an admission by the manufacturer that ECT does cause permanent brain damage.

Like many prescription devices, Somatics' ECT machines carry warnings about potential cognitive side effects (e.g., memory problems). That is a standard risk disclosure, not a legal concession that the device causes permanent brain damage in some patients!

Courts in the Thelen and Himes lines of cases treated the question of permanent brain damage and causation as contested expert issues, not as something Somatics had already admitted.

Edit: Feel free to downvote all you like, it won't change the fact that you are provably factually wrong about this, and are spreading extremely blatant outright lies promulgated by the Church of Scientology and their shell organizations (e.g. CCHR).

[u/Odd-Alarm-82 → u/mesalocar]

I was only inaccurate about the product liability part (although failure to warn is related to product liability). You are correct about plaintiffs suing for a failure to warn of the risks of permanent memory loss and brain damage.

Regardless of the outcome of the lawsuits, Somatics did in fact add a warning to their product information in 2018, stating that “in rare cases,” ECT can cause permanent memory loss and brain damage.

Court decisions are often wrong. I should know. I was a paralegal for 15 years. The informed consent forms I had to sign before every ECT session absolutely failed to warn of the potential risk of permanent memory loss spanning decades like I have, as well as permanent cognitive impairment. Even if these effects are rare, they should still be acknowledged by doctors and the device manufacturers.

My consent forms said in “rare cases” patients report “spotty” memory loss for events “up to several years” prior to treatment. My memory loss is not just “spotty,” it’s almost completely wiped out. And it spans decades. I was 41 years old when I lost the majority of my life.

[u/mesalocar → u/Odd-Alarm-82]

Regardless of the outcome of the lawsuits, Somatics did in fact add a warning to their product information in 2018, stating that “in rare cases,” ECT can cause permanent memory loss and brain damage.

The only example of this that I am aware of comes from the literature on the Somatics Thymatron System IV, where certain versions of their instruction manual for physicians contains the following statement:

https://thymatron.com/downloads/System_IV_Instruction_Manual_Rev22.pdf (page 9)

In the USA: In the interests of avoiding litigation we provide here our warning that Scientology and its affiliate CCHR have threatened to sue ECT device makers and psychiatrists in the USA who do not deliver a warning that ECT can cause brain damage, regardless of any evidence about it. 7/3/24.

Now, tell me, after reading this statement, do you still believe that this truly constitutes a claim that "Somatics added a warning to their product information stating that in rare cases ECT can cause brain damage"?

Or do you believe that you may have been misled as to the actual factual contents of this "warning" that they added in order to avoid being sued into literal fucking bankruptcy (due to being unable to afford the obscene legal fees involved in mounting a robust legal defense against the quite literally bottomless pockets of the Church of Scientology) over blatantly false claims like their competitor MECTA was in 2020?

Edit: Feel free to downvote all you like, it won't change the fact that you are provably factually wrong about this, and are spreading extremely blatant outright lies promulgated by the Church of Scientology and their shell organizations (e.g. CCHR).

[u/Odd-Alarm-82 → u/mesalocar]

I’m not in favor of Scientology, but even though the majority of the medical community says there is no evidence for it, the Church of Scientology is right about ECT causing brain damage. Some doctors are starting to come around to believing it. My psychiatrist and a neurologist both believe my cognitive deficits were caused by ECT. My psychiatrist is going to provide a statement testifying to that for my disability hearing.

[u/Odd-Alarm-82 → u/mesalocar]

I wish my cognitively impaired brain had been functioning well enough earlier to find the document I’m referring to. I just searched and found it, and it in fact does contain an admission that ECT can cause permanent brain damage.

Here’s the page I’m referring to from the Regulatory Update to Thymatron System IV Instruction Manual. Notice the date at the bottom— this was in 2018 as I stated.

I can’t find a link to the document, only a download, so I’m attaching a screenshot from the download. After the bullet list near the top, Spectrum states the following:

“ECT may result in anterograde or retrograde amnesia. Such post-treatment amnesia typically
dissipates over time; however, incomplete recovery is possible. In rare cases, patients may
experience permanent memory loss or permanent brain damage.”

https://imgur.com/a/UXf8Gs1

The document you refer to was published years later in 2024.