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Originally Posted by orbsycli
i understand there are the old ways of doing electro-shock thereapy, and the modern.
what were the intentions and usage of old electro-shock therapy? how did it help people, if it did at all. i just read about people killing themselves after undergoing it.
what's different about the modern technique? is it still used?
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Electroshock therapy is used to treat depression. It works reasonably well to manage depression for a short time period. Some folks got extended relief after a single treatment.
It was used frequently in the old days before drugs were available. It was still used with some regularity through the '70's and '80s because many of the elderly with depression could not hande the side effects of the earlier medications (mostly tricyclics). Side effects included cardiac rhythm anomalies and urinary retention.
As the number of medications has increased, and the side effects have decreased, the use of electroshock has declined.
I suspect the people killing themselves (in your example) were more likely to have been driven by their underlying pathololgy (i.e., depression) than the therapy.
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