Question:
Having wasted yet another 6 months on a mood stabiliser which the pdocs arenow coming to the conclusion are not working. I am seriously consideringasking about ECT. I have heard that bi-lateral ECT can be effective forboth mania and depression and I am curious if anyone here has gone thatcourse. What effects did it have and were they long lasting. I am preparedfor some short term memory loss and if there are no long lasting sideeffects but the benefits are good then I am prepared to give it a go.

Any information for me???

Answer: i had ~28 bilateral ECTs BEFORE every option had been tried; i findout later (by this i mean aggressive treatment with parnate+stimulantsor whatnot.) the temporary euphoria experienced by some people duringthe treatments is a known phenomena called something like 'ECTinterictal hypomania.'

the treatments ruined my life. i lost 30 years of memory, PLUS havesomething called 'antecedent memory loss.' i cannot remember thefuture; the now. after the ECTs; my little brother, a PhD candidate inphysics; had to be with me in the car for 2 years to drive to thevideo store so i wouldn't get lost: distance from home:1/3 mile and 6turns including the driveways. i had to have a god damn map to getaround the town i grew up in. i was declared 100% disabled BECAUSE ofthe treatments; not my severe dysphoric bipolar I.

it helped i suppose for a very short while. a few months later, i wascycling just as i always had been and was on med after med afteradd-on med. but my life was over; i would never finish graduateschool; there would never be professional initials after my name; iwould never know my own phone number without carrying it around. but isigned a paper that said all these things were possible! so i sued noone. i'm not the litigous type anyway. what was gone was gone and whatwas gone were my fronto-temporal lobes.

i now have a dx of fronto-temporal dementia; hence my avid interest insmart drugs. i'm the single parent of a 10 year old. going from agenius to a cretin doesn't make one hideously ugly.