Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a controversial practice, with recent research finding harm, as well as a lack of efficacy and informed consent. A new article published in Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, and Practice finds the majority of relatives and friends of people that have been exposed to ECT report that overall quality of life is diminished afterwards. This research, led by independent scholar Christopher Harrop, also finds that a majority of participants reported no improvement in the symptoms ECT was meant to treat, with many believing it actually made the symptoms worse. In line with similar research, the current work reports that memory loss is common with ECT. The authors, including John Read from the University of East London, write:
“Clearly, some people do feel that ECT had a dramatic positive, sometimes life- saving, effect on their relative or friend that ‘brought the person back’ to them. But three times as many people reported negative impacts than positive ones. A minority wrote about short- term benefits and long- term damage. The majority wrote, often with great emotion (including anger and despair) only about their distress at witnessing the damage done to a loved one by ECT, and about the loss of the person they had once known.”
One of the participants wrote the following about the effects of ECT on their mother:
“I saw my beautiful radiant creative multi- talented mother: scientist, activist, poet and writer, community leadership, in addition to all the above, she played guitar and piano and taught folk dance, become a withdrawn, fearful, dependent person who, for many years, looked at her feet when she walked, so that she would not lose her balance or fall. It was like they crushed a beautiful flower.”
Harms Associated with ECT
Past research has linked ECT with harm. People exposed to ECT have reported memory loss, cognitive issues, fatigue, emotional blunting, loss of vocabulary, and reduced quality of life. One piece of research found that nearly all (96.9%) ECT recipients reported at least one negative effect, with memory loss being the most commonly reported harm. One person that was exposed to ECT reported the memory loss was extreme, “like having Alzheimer’s, and being fully cognizant of it.” Some ECT recipients have also reported trauma and retraumatization from the experience. While ECT has been touted in the past for its ability to prevent suicide, one study found no such benefit, with some data indicating suicide risk may actually be higher after ECT. Research has also linked ECT to heart problems and brain changes that are associated with worse long-term outcomes.
Study Details
The goal of the current work was to investigate the perspectives of friends and relatives of ECT recipients on the positive and negative effects of ECT. The authors used the online survey tool Qualtrics to share a survey with mental health organizations all over the world. The survey was developed based both on past research as well as the experiences of three authors that had received ECT. The survey included a combination of yes/no, multiple choice, and open-ended questions. To be eligible for inclusion in the current work, participants had to be at least 18 years old and be a friend or family member of someone that received ECT with an understanding of how ECT affected their friend or family member. In total, the authors examined survey responses from 286 participants. This study was part of a larger investigation into the effects of ECT. Results from the 858 ECT recipients that were surveyed as part of the same research are published elsewhere.
The open-ended survey questions were analyzed and grouped into categories and overarching themes by a single author. These categories and themes were developed directly from the data and reported without interpretation from the authors.
The majority of respondents were from the US (37%) and the UK (28%). Other countries represented in the current work include Australia, Spain, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Guatemala, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey, and Uruguay. The overwhelming majority of ECT recipients were white (89%). Most ECT recipients were female (68%). The participants themselves were most commonly daughters of ECT recipients (19.4%), followed by mothers (14.8%), and sisters (10.6%).
Forty-two-point-four percent of participants reported that ECT made the problem it was meant to treat worse in their loved one with another 12.5% reporting no change. This means the symptoms ECT was meant to treat did not improve according to a majority of participants (54.9%) with 45.1% reporting they noticed improvements in the presenting symptoms. The majority of participants (61%) reported that ECT had a negative effect on their loved one’s overall quality of life compared to 32.3% that believed their loved one’s quality of life was improved. Six-point-eight percent saw no change.
One participant wrote:
“My beautiful, brilliant, motivated sister- in- law often cannot talk at all. She no longer can walk. She cannot prepare herself food. She is so courageous. She does not remember her childhood. She can show you a photograph and tell you what someone has told her about that childhood moment.”
Another participant believed ECT made their loved one more suicidal. This participant also reported the doctor that pushed for ECT did not properly consider the circumstances around their loved one’s distress:
“She was more suicidal, not less, and was dramatically less functional because of memory and cognitive damage. It closed off her ability to benefit from other paths to healing. The doctor was an ‘ECT specialist’ and did not seem capable of taking into account the effect of the many losses and stressors she was experiencing.”
Overall, participants viewed ECT as more harmful than helpful. When asked “overall, how helpful was ECT,” 60.1% of respondents answered “not at all.” Forty percent believed ECT was helpful, including 21% that reported it was “very” helpful, 10.5% saying “somewhat”, and 8.5% saying “slightly. When asked “overall, how harmful was ECT,” 53.4% said “very”, 17.9% said “somewhat”, and 9.6% said “slightly.” This means 80.9% of respondents believed ECT was harmful to some extent. Just 19.1% reported that ECT was “not at all” harmful.
One family member described ECT as follows:
“Devastating, her life will be forever negatively impacted and she likely will be battling the after effects on her health for the rest of her life.”
Another participant reported that ECT had completely disabled their loved one:
“Completely left her disabled, needs a wheelchair, often stops breathing when stimuli is overpowering, her cognition is diminished, her memory is gone.”
More than one third of participants (34.2%) believed that ECT had caused brain damage in their loved one, with 47.7% saying they were unsure about brain damage and 18.1% reporting no brain damage. Coercion was common in the administration of ECT according to participants, with 47.1% saying their loved one voluntarily consented, 31.7% reporting that their loved one gave consent under pressure, and 21.3% saying ECT was involuntary.
One participant said “she was permanently disabled by the forced ECT,” with another reporting that their faith in the mental health system was forever diminished due to the way their loved was was forced into ECT:
“It forever changed my views of the mental health system, and of forced treatment, and of psychiatrists—making me have no respect for them, and a concern and fear of their extraordinary legal powers.”
Some participants said they were misinformed about the efficacy of ECT:
“After initially trusting the medical judgement of the psychiatrist I researched it in some detail and was appalled by the non scientific nature of the intervention.” Another said, “I am very angry that I was misinformed and misled about the harm that ECT does and its effectiveness.”
Another participant suspected that doctors prescribing ECT may not have the best interest of their patients in mind:
“Serious loss of faith in the medical community at large. Great concern that Drs. prescribe this treatment to make big money for hospitals and themselves and not to actually help the patients.”
Participants reported significant memory issues in their loved ones after ECT, with 60.7% indicating some level of impairment in remembering things that occurred recently and 73.3% reporting problems with remembering things that happened before ECT. Twenty-one of 25 other adverse effects were reported by at least half of respondents, including:
- Difficulty concentrating (79.1%)
- Emotional Blunting (72.6%)
- Losing train of thought (71.5%)
- Loss of independence (71.5%)
- Fatigue (73.3%)
- Relationship problems (70.2%)
- Difficulty navigating (67.9%)
- Loss of Job (54.8%)
- Difficulty driving (64.5%)
- Difficulty reading (53.6%)
- Difficulty cooking (67.5%)
- Difficulty using the computer (61%)
- Difficulty shopping (61%)
- Difficulty with money (63.8%)
- Loss of vocabulary (63.3%)
- Headaches (59.6%)
- Sensitivity to noise (51.9%)
- Slurred speech (55.1%)
- Difficulty recognizing faces (53.6%)
- Shaky hands (52.3%)
Participants also reported that their loved ones had issues with falling over (43.6%), sensitivity to light (38.9%), walking into things (35.4%), and seizures/convulsions (23.3%).
Some friends and family members expressed guilt at having not done more to stop their loved one from receiving ECT.
“I feel guilty that I wasn’t able to stop it. I feel like I let her down. I was supposed to protect her,” said one family member. Another reported, “decades later I am still devastated that I did not or could not prevent it from happening, that I didn’t understand enough at the time, was not forceful enough to help him fight more legally to prevent it.”
Participants described the results of ECT as terrifying:
“How did her ECT impact me? It’s terrifying. I feel helpless,” said one participant. “I was terrified by so much cruelty,” reported another.
Others believed ECT had traumatized their loved one, with one saying “it’s traumatizing. I can still hear the fear in her voice.”
This research had several notable limitations. As the survey invitation was shared on social media by authors that had been critical of ECT in the past, there may have been some bias in recruiting towards people with a negative experience. Survey replies were based on memory and could have been biased by misremembering. These accounts were mostly secondhand. Some observed adverse effects reported by participants could have been caused by things other than ECT, such as aging. The survey was written in English and not translated to other languages. This means the experiences of non-English speakers would not be included in this data.
Informed Consent and ECT
Fifty-three percent of participants in the current work reported that their loved one was either forced into ECT, or was pressured to give consent. According to both research and lived experience, this is common when it comes to ECT. One ECT recipient reported feeling pressure to consent, not being able to remember actually signing the consent forms, and having no memory of being told about the adverse effects associated with ECT. A 2026 study found that a majority of patients referred to ECT did not receive adequate information on the procedure. Many participants in the same study were exposed to misinformation about ECT correcting a mythical chemical imbalance and few were told that ECT could cause heart problems and long-term or permanent memory loss. One case study even recommended using ECT to restore decision making capacity and gain informed consent for drug treatment during the period after ECT when research says “new learning is impaired.” In other words, this psychiatrist was advocating for obtaining “informed consent” from patients that likely could not understand what they were being told.
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Harrop, C., Cunliffe, S., Hancock, S. P., Johnstone, L., Morrison, L., & Read, J. (2026). An international survey of the relatives and friends of electroconvulsive therapy recipients. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. (Link)
I was struck by the fact that 68%, over two-thirds, of the ECT recipients were women.
Is this sexual disparity mere happenstance, or might there be certain factors (e.g. misogyny on the part of male psychiatrists) at play here?
In particular, how many of these unfortunate victims were elderly infirm female patients in mental institutions, nursing homes, and similar facilities?
Behind the dry statistics lurk many unanswered questions…..
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ECT has always been disproportionately inflicted on women, especially elderly women. Sexism is most definitely a factor.
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I think a number of interconnected subjects–sexism, classism, racism, and ageism in the mental health field–call for a detailed analysis. Not only ECT, but other brain-disabling treatments such as chemical lobotomies administered under the guise of “psychotherapy” disproportionately afflict the marginalized and powerless elements of society.
Is there any social scientist who’s done comprehensive research in this area?
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Thanks for highlighting the downsides of what I personally view to be a pseudoscientific and barbaric treatment. My usually cheerful mother always lowered her voice and frowned whenever she discussed her brother’s ECT sessions. I was struck by my uncle’s gloominess even as a kid, and I only later learned that I had been seeing him after he had been treated with shock therapy. If that was success, I would hate to see failure.
I have a unique take on this subject, however, not just because I am a chronic depressive myself but because I have been studying American drug attitudes from a philosophical point of view over the last eight years. I have come to believe that we cannot discuss the propriety of treatments like ECT without discussing the propriety of the drug prohibition which helps render such treatments “necessary” in the first place, at least in the minds of the severely depressed and their families.
In “Diary of a Drug Fiend,” Aleister Crowley described his first use of cocaine as follows:
“The depression lifted from my mind like the sun coming out of the clouds.”
Humphry Davy said the following of his first use of laughing gas:
“I now had a great disposition to laugh… My emotions were enthusiastic and sublime.”
And the users of the phenethylamines synthesized by chemist Alexander Shulgin in the 1990s gave such testimony as:
“A glimpse of what true heaven is supposed to feel like.”
“More than tranquil, I was completely at peace.”
“I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing.”
When I consider the above citations, while recognizing as well that psychoactive substances have inspired entire religions (for the Vedic people, the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Inca, various Native American tribes, the Greek mystery cults, etc.), I am filled with a sense of outrage, a feeling of what I consider to be righteous anger at how drug prohibition has outlawed my right to heal, while shunting me off instead onto Big Pharma meds that, as Julie Holland testifies, can be harder to kick than heroin, a view that I can confirm from a futile year-long attempt to get off Venlafaxine, after which I experienced depression far more intense than that for which I had started treatment in the first place well over 40 years ago.
So now, when I see ECT and even assisted suicide for the depressed being discussed without any reference to drug prohibition, I feel I have to speak up. This is not a criticism of you personally, Richard, for in my opinion, nearly everyone in the behavioral healthcare field writes in apparent ignorance of the power of outlawed drugs to inspire and elate.
Sadly, I seem to be about the only person in America who sees this as a problem. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the case of Claire Brosseau. She is the depressed Canadian activist who is demanding her right to assisted suicide. In other words, she is asking the state to kill her using drugs. And what state is that? It is the same state that will not let her use drugs that could help make her wish to live!
I have therefore written to all principals in Claire’s case — including to Claire herself — insisting that assisted suicide for the depressed cannot be ethically discussed without discussing the drug prohibition which helps render it necessary in the first place by outlawing all substances that are known to inspire and elate.
To my amazement and horror, no one seems to agree with me. Instead, I am told that Claire already “tried drugs” and that they did not work. But “drugs” is not an objective category of substances but rather a catchall pejorative for a wide variety of substances of which politicians disapprove (a category growing bigger every day thanks to drug synthesis and the discoveries of ethnobotanists). Such arguments also reckon without the effects of drug prohibition, which will have severely limited Claire’s access, even to illegal drugs. Moreover, strategic use of drugs for beneficial purposes is scarcely imagined possible in America; how can we expect Claire to know how to use drugs in that way, especially when she’s living life inside the mental fog of severe depression?
But Claire would have to be an alien from Mars to be unsusceptible to the positive effects of all psychoactive drugs. Our minds are biochemical machines that are made in such a way as to respond to psychoactive medicines. She herself says she loved “drugs” in the New York Times story about her case first published in December 2025. What Claire really needs is the help of a kind of professional for which we do not even have a name yet in drug-hating America: a pharmacologically savvy empath who will suggest strategic usage patterns of a wide variety of medicines, such that Claire can continue to live with the help of strategically applied motivation from a variety of psychoactive substances (assuming we can bring ourselves to accept the modest proposition that drug use is at least better than death itself). If Claire wins her right to be killed by the state, she will be helping to further normalize the demonstrably deadly policy of drug prohibition. She will also be setting a bizarre and dangerous precedent for chronically depressed people like myself. I can already envision a dystopian future in which the TV ad voiceovers say: “Depressed? Ask your doctor if assisted suicide is right for YOU.”
So in a way, it’s not surprising that no one recognizes the relevance of drug prohibition to the debate about ECT, given that most people do not even consider drug prohibition to be relevant to the debate over assisted suicide for the depressed. Of course, when I say “no one,” I mean no one among the movers-and-shakers on such topics. I dare say if we took a vote among the chronically depressed, we would see a different reaction — although American media has been suppressing talk about beneficial drug use for so long now that even the chronically depressed may believe the lie that there is no hope left for them besides brain damage or suicide.
I think it’s time that we recognize that the chronically depressed like myself are stakeholders in America’s drug debate and that drug prohibition has outlawed our right to heal. I live with the proof of that fact every day. I hope that someday the experts in the fields of psychology and psychiatry will recognize this disempowerment as well (even though it’s not necessarily in their financial interests to do so) and demand the end of drug prohibition in the name of restoring the right to heal to the depressed.
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Aleister Crowley died a heroin addict, so there’s that. Freud saw cocaine as a “miracle drug,” and his own use possibly contributed to his oral cancer and partial loss of his jaw. What is definitely known is that cocaine gave him episodes of delirium tremens when he was forced to stop.
It seems you want substances that fall under the label of recreational drugs to be legalized, so you can have them as an alternative to psych drugs. But, what’s the difference really? Either way, your happiness will still be dependent on a given substance. Here’s a comparison of psych drugs vs recreational drugs — and yes, there is little difference: https://totalmentalhealth.info/psych-meds-no-better-than-street-drugsturns-out-they-have-a-lot-in-common/
Personally, I struggled with depression and severe food craving issues. I went to God for these, did deliverance in Jesus’ name for maybe 1-3 months (back in 2020), and reaped lasting benefit. I don’t need chemicals to go about my life.
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You`ve just had a heavy session of electroshock therapy, and you`re more relaxed than you`ve been in weeks. (Patient climbs into bed) All those childhood traumas magically wiped away, along with most of your personality.
The orb`s little album 94 (that was the year they gave me electroshock therapy)
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ECT is barbaric and needs to be abolished. At one point, the psychiatric industry wanted to push it on kids for things like ADHD and the like. Disgusting. My uncle, a Vietnam vet, had his first ECTs shortly after he returned home from the war, went all these years without/did fairly well on his meds. He was recently dealing with some pretty serious MEDICAL issues and ended up in the hospital but all they did was focus on his mental health history. He was subjected to more ECTs … they wanted to do 11 rounds but stopped at 5 because he was developing seizures. He finally got the MEDICAL help he needed and is home and doing fine. Thank God.
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It’s kind of mind-boggling that this medieval-like practice is still taking place. When I worked at an addiction clinic, I had a client who was undergoing ECT. I tried to talk her out of it and advised her to try healing through a good church in town. She seemed open-minded, but she still wanted to do the ECT for the time being. Oh well, there’s only so much one can do, especially when the mental health industry has accumulated so much authority that has lay people convinced that they know what they’re doing.
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