each year more than two million people begin their life after ECT. We must take warnings about permanent injury seriously. Not only can some patients experience problems during and immediately after ECT, BUT some patients develop additional problems long after treatment.
If the device is reclassified a scientific safety investigation of these devices will never take place, and patients will not have the information they need to make an informed choice about the treatment.
On more than one occasion this office has been asked to confirm a state hospital patient's consent to ECT only to determine that the patient did not understand the decision he or she was being asked to make or that other less intrusive treatments had not been tried.
I think I just want people to know is that no matter how hard things get, its not worth giving up your memories and forgetting a part of who you are.
These are reports from people who had ECT in recent years and experienced permanent deficits in memory ability and other cognitive abilities (known as anterograde amnesia).