Shock Therapy For Depression??

Electric shock therapy may treat depression better than antidepressant drugs, although much controversy surrounds the procedure.

The treatment, known as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), uses electric shocks to cause a seizure in patients under anesthesia. The seizure causes the brain to release chemicals that produce changes that may relieve depression.

However, some doctors say that ECT is not an effective therapy and may even cause brain damage, and the technique may have a negative connotation due to media portrayals based on "old-fashioned practices." Yet according to researchers, the treatment does work and the side effects are manageable.

As evidenced by six experiments that involved 256 people, ECT improved symptoms of depression better than simulated ECT.

Additionally, 18 other trials, which included 1,144 people, showed that ECT improved symptoms of depression better than antidepressants.

Researchers reported that ECT administered to both sides of the brain was more effective than ECT administered to only one side of the brain.

Side effects of the treatment include short-term memory loss, nausea and headache.

The Lancet 2003;361:799-808

Dr. Mercola's Comment

This story reminds me of when they used to do lobotomies for mental illness. If you are not familiar with this barbaric approach please read my review on lobotomies.

Electroconvulsive therapy, while it may be effective, is nearly as brutal and ideally should be avoided. As I said in the last issue:

The tragic aspect of this scenario is that those who are depressed may be suffering due to a nutritional component.

Soda, juices, sugar-coated grain cereals, candies, cookies, doughnuts, chips, popcorn, ice cream, pizza and vegetables oils are loaded with trans omega-6 fats along with a deficiency of omega-3 oils. The amazing thing is that so many can actually survive this nutritional assault.

Certainly, emotional factors are also major contributors to depression and an optimum diet will not resolve depression in many children. However, that is in no way a carte blanche justification to use mind-altering drugs to treat the symptoms.

Use of these drugs is especially concerning since recent studies prove that antidepressants don’t work much better than sugar pills (placebos).

If you are concerned about depression in yourself or your child please review the recent guidelines I compiled on how to treat depression.

If your child has depression, why not use a simple, safe and inexpensive technique that has a high likelihood of addressing the cause of the depression rather than just covering up the symptoms with a drug Band-Aid?

Energetic rebalancing techniques work to resolve the cause behind the depression. One such technique, my favorite, is the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). You can review my free, 25-page report that discusses how to perform the EFT technique, however, depression is best treated with a trained EFT therapist. To find an EFT therapist, you can review Dr. Patricia Carrington’s guidelines.

Please also consider optimizing your child’s diet by eliminating all of the sugar and most all grain products. You can also review the comprehensive nutrition plan for further information.

One of the most important tools in optimizing your own or your child’s diet is to make sure you are getting enough omega-3 fats. An excellent source of these fats are cod liver oil and fish oil. I have had large numbers of patients spontaneously take themselves off their antidepressants once they started the fish oils.

Dr. Stoll, director of the psychopharmacology research lab at Boston's McLean Hospital and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, discusses this topic extensively in his book The Omega-3 Connection. I highly recommend this book, which reviews new evidence supporting the use of omega-3 oils for depression.

I also recommend finding a high-quality source of fish oil. It is necessary to have a quality source to ensure that toxins and other impurities have been removed from the oil. I offer Carlson’s brand fish oil and cod liver oil on this site, as I have found it to be of superior quality.

Related Articles:

Treatment Options for Dealing With Depression

Antidepressants Proven to Work Only Slightly Better Than Placebo

Sugar Pills Work as Well As Antidepressants

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