Why Does Electroconvulsive Therapy Still Get Used?

Andrew Scull says electroconvulsive therapy still gets used because patients on the brink of suicide, with long-running depressions, have described it as life-saving, and recent controlled trials give enough evidence that it is hard to say the treatment never works.

The record in the 40s, 50s, and 60s is terrible. The CIA funded Ewan Cameron in Canada, and he gave multiple treatments a day until people could not walk, talk, or feed themselves and were incontinent. He claimed to rebuild them, but many were left permanently damaged. There is no clue why the treatment works. It is purely empirical, and Scull thinks the missing explanation tends to put people off. Removing a curable cancer rests on knowing that cancer is cells dividing uncontrollably and damaging the body. Lobotomy, insulin comas, deep sleep treatments, and Henry Cotton's endeavors can be thrown away. Scull's high blood pressure is different: he takes a pill every day, the side effects are very minor for him, and the pill turns a condition that could have killed him by stroke or heart attack into one that is very well controlled.