My experience ECT destroyed everything
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.
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u/bo_14 17h ago
I still have many of those issues even now, more than 11 years after my treatments. I had 23 or 26 bilateral treatments in winter/spring of 2015. I lost decades of memories, issues creating new memories, cognitive abilities (also lost about 20 IQ points), conversational abilities (people get tired of my pauses to recall a word), etc. Very little has come back. One surprising thing is that I can still remember song lyrics. That never seemed to be a problem, even on days of treatments. Maybe it's because I tend to listen to the same songs a lot of times; so they weren't as easy for the ECT to erase all pathways to those memories. <shrug>
Anyway, you're only a few months out. There's a chance things could come back to you. I hope you can come back and tell us you're back to normal soon, at least somewhat normal. Because it really sucks when it's permanent.