Re:In the deepest despair, electroconvulsive therapy offers ...
by kerblang on Monday March 29, 2021 @04:13PM
(#26627577)
While the parent comment isn't all that helpful, I suspect they meant "...in exchange for a temporary change..."; in other words, not that that depression is temporary, but beneficial effects of ECT are.
Re:In the deepest despair, electroconvulsive therapy offers ...
by yellowapple on Monday March 29, 2021 @05:39PM
(#26628516)
> Saying depression is a “temporary change in behavior"
That ain't how I interpreted the above comment.
> but it is also has proven efficacy
Right, but at what cost? It seems very much like something that just replaces one problem with another, at best (and at worst, introduces more problems while the existing ones don't go away).
But hey, as long as it's voluntary, who am I to judge?
Re:In the deepest despair, electroconvulsive therapy offers ...
by type0 on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @06:37AM
(#26633020)
> But hey, as long as it's voluntary, who am I to judge?
If we are talking about very severely depressed you can't trust them to weight the risks and benefits in their own favor, so the physicians have so big overwhelming influence on their decision that it can't be argued otherwise.
Re:In the deepest despair, electroconvulsive therapy offers ...
by yellowapple on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @12:48PM
(#26636988)
That's kind of what I was underhandedly getting at, yeah.
And when applied to more debilitating conditions like schizophrenia, "consent" is even more wibbly-wobbly.
Depression kills people. ECT has serious side effects but it is also has proven efficacy and, if administered properly, is never fatal. All medicine involves this sort of cost-benefit analysis and in cases of severe drug-resistant depression, where there is a high risk of the patient dying in the short term, ECT is the only alternative.