WHY IS ECT CONTROVERSIAL?

• There is a lot of misinformation about ECT.
• ECT has become animportant target for anti-psychiatry groups. Several such groups want ECT to be banned.
• Claims are made that ECT always causes brain damage, irreversibly changes personality or even causes breast cancer.
• The majority of ECT web sites on the internet are strongly anti-ECT. The most extreme ones state that ECT never does any good, if patients appear to get better it is because they are stunned, shocked or brain damaged.
• A common claim is that ECT works because it impairs memory, in other words it makes you forget why you were depressed. This is not true, getting better with ECT does not depend on memory impairment.
• Another often stated view is that ECT works becausee it is a punishment. This is because some severely depressed patients feel they are responsible for things going wrong. They may even feel they deserve to be punished and believe this is the purpose of the treatment.
• However most patients who have ECT do not feel so guilty and they still get better.