Shock Treatment for Depression: Treatment or Torture?
Many scientists, doctors and researchers are split over the effectiveness of the shock treatment for depression. Not enough information is being provided to patients and their relatives and friends.
This is a controversial treatment that has some people claiming that it is more of a torture than a treatment. Experts claim that patients develop memory loss, loss of concentration skills, more anxiety and have lost the ability to do skills learned prior to the treatment.
Although it has made itself a bad reputation in the past, shock treatment for depression is now making a comeback and more doctors are recommending it now.
What shock treatment for depression does is that it passes electrical current to a person’s brain while he or she is under anesthesia. What it aims for is to produce a seizure in the brain to eradicate severe depression.
New discoveries today shows that if a shock treatment for depression is combined with the intake of the anti-depressant drug nortriptyline and lithium after the shock therapy, it lowers the chance significantly of a patient going into a relapse.
Also, many of them claim that with more studies, shock treatment for depression has the most possibilities and future in the world of medicine. They just fear that because of its bad reputation and the stigma of past failures, this huge potential may not ever be reached.
Whether or not scientists can ever make shock treatment for depression work, what is important is that when consulting your doctor, you must have a thorough discussion on the effects of whichever treatment you are willing to undergo. It is your life, depression may make it difficult, but that doesn’t mean you have to make it worse.
Tags: depression, teenage depression, depression medication, clinical depression
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