Electroconvulsive Therapy Success and Failure - Two Patients Discuss Their Different ECT Outcomes

This guest audio is from the Emotional Self Reliance Podcast, Sarah Hancock and her friend, Greg Threadgold have both had electroconvulsive therapy with remarkably different outcomes. In this episode they compare their different ECT experiences and discuss the need for better regulation of this procedure to ensure good outcomes for all patients.

See original interview on YouTube.

SHOW NOTES

I sat down with Greg Threadgold, an ECT patient who feels ECT saved his life.

We had a sincere discussion about the differences in treatment practices and the need to prevent injury among ECT patients.

Greg Threadgold discusses his ECT Success and shares how he felt about my failed treatment.

Repetitive head injury has delayed effects as does low-voltage diffuse electrical injury.

ECT must be considered through the lens of both repetitive head trauma and an electrical injury (900 milliamps/450 volts/504mC).

To standardize, regulate, audit ECT and provide rehabilitation to patients if/when injured, please sign and share the international patient safety petition

Your signature could save a life.

Sadly, Greg’s experienced his first episode of symptoms associated with delayed electrical injury eight years after having 13 treatments.

His experience speaks to the reality that even “successful ECT outcomes” carry the risk of developing low-voltage diffuse electrical injury symptoms years after treatment.

Paroxysmal neurological disorders from electrical injuries acquired channelopathies can be difficult to recognize and diagnose.

We desperately need researchers who study acquired brain injuries and/or repetitive head injuries to do a retrospective study on people with a history of shock treatment to identify needs associated with the delayed effects of repeatedly exposing the brain to 900 milliamps/450 volts of electricity.

Dr. Bennet Omalu, the neuropathologist who first identified and published on Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy among American Football Players, stated in California’s Department of Rehabilitation TBI Advisory Board Meeting that electroconvulsive therapy must be considered through the lens of a repetitive electrical injury to the head.

The neuropathology of ECT is clear.

It’s both a repetitive head injury and an electrical injury–and must be considered as such when considering the functional acquired brain injury to develop appropriate interventional rehabilitative care. (Omalu, B. (2019, August).

TBI Advisory Board Meeting of California’s Department of Rehabilitation, Sacramento, CA).

Please continue to share the #AuditECT petition!