New Year’s Eve of 2003 started my second incapacitating episode of bipolar disorder that lasted a whole calendar year. I was lucky to find a psychiatrist at an outpatient hospital clinic in New York who took the lousy HMO insurance I had at the time. My dear brother, a mathematician, was my psychotherapist. We held our emergency sessions through long distance phone calls on my cell. Thank goodness for siblings and cell phones.
In 2007 I experienced another incapacitating bipolar episode, this time for a year and a half. Second time around I had an experienced psychotherapist from Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He recommended me a knowledgeable psychiatrist, his colleague from an even more upscale Upper East Side neighborhood.
Both times I ended up having electroshock treatments for the same reason — simply because I begged my medical team to administer them. People close to me couldn’t bear to see me suffer immensely, and so they supported me in my decision.
When I was hospitalized for shock treatments in 2003, I only spoke with my brother a couple of times from a payphone in the hospital hallway. While I was hospitalized in 2007, my psychotherapist came and conducted a couple of private therapy sessions in the psych unit, a practice unheard of even in New York City.
So I obviously had moved up as a mental health consumer, and my therapist was quite qualified even in his league. And yet he later felt remorse and even shame that he had let me be treated with electroshocks.
When half a year prior to my treatments we spoke about me being terrified with my episode spiraling down into depression too fast, my therapist asked me, in our shared native Russian:
“What are you so scared of, what’s this terrified look on your face all about?”
“I’m afraid it’s gonna get to shocks again” was my immediate response.
“C’mon, it’s not gonna get to that, trust me” he smiled confidently.
***
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) or electroshock treatment is prescribed for clinically depressed or bipolar patients suffering from severe depressive symptoms.
And yes, it’s exactly what it’s called: it’s a series of shocks to your brain. And if it sounds scary it’s because this treatment is, indeed, very invasive and risky.
It can cause major memory problems, both retrograde and — most importantly — going forward. It has been shown and proven to adversely affect retention ability for reading, as well as cause major impairment of other cognitive functions.
ECT is only prescribed to those who don’t show any response to various psychotropic medications, and is claimed to be effective for about eighty percent of suicidal depression patients, although the validity of this seemingly impressive statistic is widely disputed since often the urges return shortly thereafter.
Effective, first of all, means that the person stops feeling suicidal — which is why it’s referred to as an “emergency treatment” or sometimes “last resort treatment.” It’s not that the doctors are unaware of its horrendous possible side effects; it’s just that everyone gets very nervous when the term “suicidal” is tossed around, and this symptom makes people see the world in black and white terms.
When people get nervous they like to feel in control, to act. Especially if they are used to being in control, like doctors are (or believe they are).
Psychotherapists are different than MDs, and different than psychiatrists, at least in theory. At their best, they’re supposed to be non-invasive and non-judgmental and not impose their personality and their decisions on a patient. In reality, when push comes to shove psychotherapists are also doctors.
At the same time, psychotherapists have a close relationship with their patients, and they feel empathy for them, just like family and friends do… So if the patient is desperate they are liable to lose perspective as well, unfortunately, just like family.
In the classic cases of depression, ECT is not only about saving the person by taking away the suicidal urges. ECT is also designed to “take the edge off” depression, to make the person functional. In other words, the person can finally get out of bed and take a shower, stops crying all the time, speaks in complete sentences, etc.
But in my case, a case of atypical bipolar disorder, it meant more than that, since I wasn’t completely lifeless, I was actually restless and agitated. What “taking the edge off” meant was that the enormous mental anguish that was tormenting me was supposed to stop.
That anguished feeling is the key to understanding the story of my ECTs. It explains why my caring and experienced therapist felt he had no choice but to support me in my insistence on ECT. My therapist’s support, in turn, was at fault in my loving husband being unable to stop me from that invasive procedure. As much as my husband wanted to, as much as he was scared of side effects he was overpowered by my treatment team and especially the authority of the therapist.
That anguished state of mind and body is hard to compare to anything, it’s like trying to jump out of your own skin and not being able to, feeling extremely restless inside, unable to focus on anything — and wishing to die that very second, and not being able to tolerate this urge to die… It’s an intense, desperate state of mind; conducive to suicide attempts. Except that during both episodes I was too scattered and not consistently energetic enough to try anything, to actually attempt.
Trying anything that could make the mental anguish go away seemed plausible and sort of the only way to find an exit from that desperation… I was lucky psychiatry didn’t yet invent other treatment options, even more invasive and with more detrimental side effects, that I could try.
***
For me, ECT did nothing. I didn’t stop being suicidal and the mental anguish didn’t stop. I ended up being in the twenty percent during both 2003 and 2007 episodes, two times in a row.
During my 2003 episode I received a series of ten shocks and at first they seemed to “magically” cure me. However, it only took a month for me to go back to feeling depressed and suicidal — again. Even though those shock treatments didn’t seem to do any cognitive damage to my brain they simply proved not to be the magical solution everyone was looking for.
In 2007 I again had a series of shocks over a two-week period — only to discover that I felt more energetic yet just as anguished and suicidal as before the shocks. Meaning my risk of acting on intense suicidal feelings didn’t diminish, but actually increased — I had more energy to carry them out.
They also had the effect of a failure of the “last resort” treatment on me. Therefore the desperation to end the suffering became even more compelling…
I later discovered a diary, among my papers, of my 2007 hospitalization for shock treatments. I found it quite peculiar, never having been in the habit of keeping diaries, that here I was, writing my thoughts down on that psych ward, of all times and places.
My thoughts, before my first shock treatment, revolved around two topics. I didn’t talk about how terrified I was, it was likely way too painful to describe or even name…
I was writing about what sins I had committed in my life that God was now punishing me for, and how could I possibly atone for them, and that there was no way I could, not that coming Yom Kippur nor ever.
I was admitted during High Holiday season so the diary was talking about how my family was miserable celebrating the holidays without me.
And they were indeed miserable. My then almost seven-year-old twins learned that something must be majorly wrong with mommy if she has to go into the hospital a few days before Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year’s, and then went for some incapacitating procedure on the Eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year.
Not that they never suspected anything beforehand; after all, I had been in the throes of a bipolar episode for some eight months by then. It was hard all along but that ECT episode made it officially tragic, both for them and somehow even for my husband. It wasn’t just an unplanned hospitalization; it was an emergency hospitalization that nobody ever explained to them — not then and not afterwards.
It was too scary, too confusing even for my husband back then. No wonder he couldn’t explain it to our kids. Scary since he knew of possible lasting side effects. Confusing since he knew it had not been helpful the first time around, and therefore he felt it was unjustified that second time.
The main reason I got the shocks, that highly risky and invasive treatment procedure, the second time around, was my insistence on it. And my insistence on deliverance from suffering was amplified by the empathy my doctors felt for my mental anguish.
Since I was having an episode of bipolar disorder, and not just depression, it meant that in my type of disease the suicidal mood was coupled with a sporadically agitated, high-energy state. And given how anguished I was, I channeled my boost of energy towards begging my medical team, my psychiatrist and my therapist, to try that powerful treatment.
I’ve always been good at convincing people, a definite strength of mine, and bipolar agitation was helpful in that particular situation. I was telling medical professionals who believed in being able to relieve people’s suffering that they had a powerful weapon at their disposal and thus they could beat all odds.
***
Given that there is no physical pain from ECT, there is only the pain of emotional awakening, the coming back to my senses — only to realize I had just survived the shocks. In 2007, the second time around, I already knew how invasive the shock treatment was, so I was honestly dead scared of what was to come, what would become of my exhausted brain.
Over the next few weeks, as I was recovering from the shocks of 2007 I was feeling disoriented in time, hardly had any memory of the happenings during the past few months, was uncoordinated and unable to drive. I would never recover the retrograde memories of the few months around the series of shock treatments.
But unlike many ECT patients I have no grossly incapacitating memory problems going forward, thank God; my brain functions relatively well.
I even fully regained my coordination and ability to drive after a few long months.
However, it eventually became apparent that my ability to retain and recall information clearly suffered since that second series of shocks in 2007 — an irreparable damage I have to live with for the rest of my life.
Three years later I would suffer from exactly the same feeling of mental anguish during my bipolar episode in 2010. By then the mighty science of psychiatry would invent another experimental treatment, injections of the chemical Ketamine. Luckily Ketamine wouldn’t be famous for possibly invasive side effects, although for a while its main anti-depressive properties would be proclaimed to be as powerful as that of ECT, a short-lived fad.
***
We were sitting in the office of my new psychiatrist, a faculty member from an Ivy League medical school. As we started talking about the total ineffectiveness of my Ketamine injections (akin to my ECTs) my new doctor grinned and pronounced about my previous episode:
“You had a psychiatrist from the Upper East Side, a therapist from the Upper West Side, and you ended up with going through ECT, unbelievable!”
I was very depressed at the time and thus had no energy to defend anyone or to argue with her, I just smiled politely.
Back then I was and I still am feeling grateful that I can read, remember, and write.
I don’t remember or write as well as I used to. But I do.
Unlike thousands of patients who were administered shock treatments while suffering from mental anguish, with all odds stuck against them… Years later they can hardly recall who they are, can’t follow the storyline of survivors’ testimonies, and never dream of writing their own.
Dear Yael,
I’m sorry that you had to endure so much suffering, including hospitalizations and shock. I most often hear people identify as psychiatric survivors because they were subjected to harmful psychiatric treatment or institutionalization by force. You however, seemed to have voluntarily subjected yourself to harmful, ineffective treatments, yet you do not blame the medical establishment for offering false hope, condoning and promoting harmful, ineffective treatments which are based on fraudulent scientific data, or for inadequately monitoring the long term effects of your past, psychiatric treatment. Your story seems to have some holes.
Your story makes it clear that you found the counseling and support of both family members and professional psychotherapists to be very helpful, while you found the ECT to be unhelpful. What is less clear is whether you felt hospitalization to be helpful and the daily, psychiatric drug regimen that was no doubt a part of your daily existence.
Two questions: 1) Is it possible that your mental anguish was caused at least in part, by your religious upbringing? You stated that you felt that God was subjecting you to punishment for ‘past sins’. Is it possible that this propensity to see yourself as a sinful, irredeemable individual was the outcome of faulty religious teachings instilled in you at a young age? Is it possible that you were subjected to psychiatric labeling as a child or young adult in relationship to your propensity to question religious beliefs or values cherished by your family?
2) Is is possible that the mental anguish that you endured was caused by akasthisia caused by prescribed psychiatric drugs, fast switches from one drug to another or cold turkey withdrawal from one or more psychiatric drugs? If either of these are true, then you are a psychiatric survivor in the sense that you suffered both religious and medical malpractice, however, your story does not delve into this aspect of your experience.
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Dear Madmom,
Thank you for your thoughtful questions and comments, and for reading the piece carefully. I’d try to reply and clarify and feel free to ask further questions.
Maybe my story doesn’t make things clear but it’s not because I was evasive — rather because things are not always black and white. I surely believe that ECT is a rather harmful treatment, there is a lot written about it, see the great book “Doctors of Deception” by Linda Andre for example. But I also try to show in my essay that the desire to administer ECT can come from good intentions and concerns for the patient’s safety, even if the decision is misguided. And as for blame yet I blame the ECT industry for promoting this “treatment” but particular practitioners are honestly misguided by what they were taught to do…
With regards to your question about religious guilt feelings yes it could be a major factor for many people, I see it in my work as a chaplain. I doubt it was a major factor for me (I grew up completely secular) but it could be a factor.
With regards to akathisia I definitely had my share of it and at the time described in the essay I did suffer from it, and yes it probably was responsible for the intensity of my mental anguish. You asked about psych meds — well, aside from giving me side effects they weren’t helpful in dealing with my suicidality and bipolar symptoms. The only medication I ever found more helpful than others was Abilify but then maybe it was simply a correlation with other positive changes in my life.
As for hospitalizations, I’m by far not an expert on those since I had only a handful of short inpatient psych stays and of those two were for the purposes of administering ECTs. I found them quite traumatic for sure but they were a rather small part of my 20+ years of experience with psychiatry. And last but not least — we’re psychiatric survivors by virtue of calling ourselves this way, it’s not something you have to “qualify” for. It’s an identity.
Thanks again for reading and commenting, and blessings to you!
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I’m sorry you had such a hard time with your illness. Shock treatment is not the “miracle” some would make it out to be. Just the opposite. Everybody’s experience is different. Mine was at 16 when I was committed to a state hospital. I was given the muscle relaxant without a sedative, and experienced excruciating pain. Afterwards, I had daily painful, intrusive memories which made it hard for me to concentrate on anything else for years, long-lasting depression, a loss of the capacity to learn, and a decline in school grades. The FDA warns that: “…The long-term safety and effectiveness of ECT treatment has not been demonstrated.” (Code of Federal Regulation, Electroconvulsive Therapy Device, 21 CFR 882.5940). If you are interested, you can read more about my horrible experiences in MAD:
“The Shady World of Shock Treatment,” and “Committed at 16: Memories of a State Hospital.”
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Yael,
First of all, I can’t thank you enough for sharing your experiences. The narrative and detail is incredibly important in my mind for everyone an maybe even yourself to understand more of the full picture of what is happening to all of us and each of us. I remember sobbing while i wrote my experience which was a huge process of waking up to me, and then when i reread it I am given the gift of memories I can no longer recall. Making a conscious effort to retell and recall these experiences is powerful for many reasons, I wonder if the oral traditions of our ancestors possessed much more power than just a history. I am glad you are a part of that.
I understand these cognitive changes fairly well, Its my conclusion that after my experience with TMS that many of the changes we see in ECT patients are the same. TMS fails to produce, as of yet, many people with long term memory loss but the functional memory problems are almost mandatory. In fact I think the functional memory loss accounts for some of the reports of success, but that’s another story – people don’t want to remember and it could ease rumination.
I wonder if you have identified any source for the agitation you speak of(liken to or possibly internal akathisia)? I try not to get overly concerned with it, but for myself I am drawn to understanding it because it is so significant an experience.
AS an example, my first experience with it was when taking lexapro, but after buspar was introduced it resolved. I never experienced it again until a few years after TMS. I began a strict dietary routine that included a detox period, for the second time, and this time a week or two in I had it again but this time it would stay and pulse in and out of my life for the next six months or so, and I am still very concerned about it as I often feel it looming as if it is waiting to break through. So while the Lexapro was the obvious first cause, the second was – as i understand it to the best of my ability – brought on by toxicity after already having sustained a serious repetitive TBI. This is a very physiological explanation, because I do not really have an emotional reason. At the time they occurred there was really no significant shifts or ramping up of emotions or trauma being stirred up – things were not pleasant to be sure – but they were even. I am curious if you have any pontifications on yours? I do think this kind of information is very valuable.
The other part of your story that REALLY jumped out, of course all of it was wonderfully informative and helpful in my understanding, was that you brough up this idea that empathy was perhaps the most dangerous social mechanism in determining your care and possibly a massive liability.
I have had very similar thoughts that kindness has been responsible for my own harm and that even on a very large scale it is very harmful. In fact it seems that psychiatry gets by as this kind of social compassion and therefore they do not need any objective evidence of their actions and motives. It was not always this way, but when it comes to my medical treatments, maybe i would rather be governed with an iron fist of objectivity or restriction than be able to argue or convince others of a treatment subjectively, because like you, I will always win that one, its a talent – and apparently a liability. I too convinced my loved ones to let the treatment pass when they did not trust it and would not allow it initially. I am very curious what you think with your experience?
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Dear James,
Thank you for your most detailed and insightful comment on this piece. And a separate thank you for your moving and vulnerable descriptions of your terrible TMS experience.
I totally agree with your astute observation about kindness and empathy — for sure people usually mean well and honestly believe they’re helping and relieving suffering, and that’s “The best we can do given the circumstances” and this last assertion is never questioned. Whereas what they are really saying is “that’s the best we can do when it comes to quick and cheap (for us all) fixes.”
I had a near miss with TMS when the same psychiatrist who tried Ketamine on me (described at the end of the piece) suggested TMS as a “safe” procedure and only my husband’s wisdom and resolve restrained me from “giving it a try” — thank G-d.
Thank you for being part of MIA community!
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Thank you for sharing your story, Yael. I like your name, by the way. Yael, it sounds just serene. I’m glad madmom mentioned the akathisia, which of course makes one anything but serene, because that’s definitely what your description sounded like to me.
It’s interesting, since many psych survivors disown their psychiatric label, that you still consider yourself to be “bipolar.” I assume you read Robert Whitaker’s “Anatomy of an Epidemic,” which pointed out that the “antidepressants” can create the symptoms of “bipolar”?
Out of curiosity, I was wondering if you have weaned from the psych drugs, or if you still take them? (But if you’d prefer not to say, that’s definitely your right.) And I will say, your seeming lack of anger at the psychiatric fraudsters, does display remarkable serenity.
I just looked up the meaning of your name, and thought the meaning was ironic. “The name Yael is primarily a female name of Hebrew origin that means Mountain Goat.” I find it ironic, since I felt like a scape goat – and represented myself as such in one of my paintings – when I was being psychiatrically defamed and neurotoxic poisoned, for a case of antidepressant withdrawal induced (and misdiagnosed) “bipolar.” Yael should mean remarkable serenity, instead. And I pray that for you in the future.
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Dear Someone Else,
Thank you for your sincere reaction and question, and for giving me the option not to answer.
The issue of psych drugs is more complicated than many would assume but that’s a long story. The short answer is that I weaned myself of the whole cocktail (very slowly and with medical supervision that I was lucky to have at the time) except for a very tiny maintenance dosage of lithium. Maybe it’s more of a placebo effect but I feel this low dosage has a preventative effect against further episodes, most survivors would disagree with me.
As for the ‘bipolar’ label, I don’t use it anymore, I’m just a psych survivor — and yes many psych drugs can make your mood/cognitive symptoms much worse, and meds induced bipolar is one of many examples of that. My first manic episode was way before I knew how to spell “bipolar”, at 19, so it’s not my case –but I’ve seen this with others.
And last but not least — thank you for saying “Yael” sounds serene, agree! The Biblical character from the Book of Judges wasn’t serene at all but I love the story 😉
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“You had a psychiatrist from the Upper East Side, a therapist from the Upper West Side, and you ended up with going through ECT, unbelievable!”” <– cut-n-pasted from above….
First, thank-you, Yael, for sharing some of your story here. Yes, I read your words very carefully, and I'm trying to understand what you're saying. I'd like to think that I have both empathy and understanding for your experiences as you describe them here. I myself was first psychiatrised and drugged with neuro-toxins at age 15, in 10th grade. After the catalyst of reading Dr. Peter Breggin's "Toxic Psychiatry" in 1993 started my snowball rolling downhill, I have been free of the scourge of psychiatry and psych drugs for well over 25 years now.
So I prefer to challenge directly an actual "faculty member from an Ivy League medical school", as you describe them. Please don't think that I am challenging you personally, Yael, or your experiences. But I think you strengthen the harsh judgement I have for the pseudoscience drug racket of psychiatry.
Whether a psychiatrist or therapist is from the Upper West or East Side of New York City, well, how in the HELL can that have ANY real bearing on a (supposedly) scientific "medical" "diagnosis"? Does being a medical school faculty member affect clinical judgement in the same way that neighborhood of origin does? What possible relevance does academic status have on a person's diagnostic abilities? What possible relevance or effect does neighborhood of origin and academic employment status have on precision of accuracy in prescribing the CORRECT "medication" for the CORRECT "diagnosis"?…..
Maybe you can see where I'm going with this line of questioning?….
Maybe you have some idea where I'm coming from here, in asking these questions?….
Maybe you feel that you have some answers to my questions, and that you understand my questions?….
So I'll be honest with you, Yael:
I don't really think that you, Yael, in your story above, or myself, in my comments & questions here, have ANY FRICKIN' IDEA WHAT either ONE of us IS REALLY TALKING ABOUT!….
Honestly, seriously, I am literally fabricating questions from the words I read here.
I have no idea what I'm really asking here.
I don't really care.
I don't really care whether this comment, and my questions, makes sense to anybody, or NOT….
Because, I think that once again, I am proving what I have been saying for DECADES NOW!:
"Psychiatry is a pseudoscience, a drugs racket, and a social control mechanism. It's 21st Century Phrenology, with potent neuro-toxins. Psychiatry has done, and continues to do, FAR MORE HARM than good. The DSM-5 is best seen as a catalog of billing codes. EVERYTHING in the DSM was either invented or created. NOTHING in the DSM was DISCOVERED.
So-called "mental illnesses" such as "bi-polar" are exactly as "real" as presents from Santa Claus, but NOT MORE REAL….
To sum up, psychiatry is MEDICAL FASCISM PERSONIFIED….
Psychiatry is a form of only-sometimes-fatal GENOCIDE….
In short, PSYCHIATRY IS GENOCIDE….
ECT = Electro-Cution Torture….
Please, ANYBODY, prove me wrong….
Go ahead, I DARE YOU TO TRY to prove me wrong….
My current fantasy is that I will see an actual reply from Dr. Peter Gotzsche here!…..
I don't know whether I want to see Yael Anohi reply, or not….
We shall see what we shall see….but what in the hell can that be?….
In the scam pseudoscience of psychiatry, the imagination is the limit…..
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