Study Reveals Dangers of ECT
"65% of people who had had ECT reported impaired organizational skills (ECT Anonymous, 1999). Another found that one-third had difficulty concentrating, and 15% reported loss of reasoning ability (Pedler, 2001).
However, former patients have publicly testified that ECT can result in a very significant (>30 point) permanent decrement in IQ score (Food and Drug Administration)
‘After ECT I could no longer play my guitar. I could not remember chord sequences patterns, words or songs that I had performed hundreds of times before ECT. The ability to play or learn new music has never returned.’
‘I can’t remember new information with the ease that I could before ECT. Distractions and interruptions seriously interfere with information
retention, and any new bit of information may “cancel out” the bit that preceded it.’
‘I had to drop out of school when I realized I could not remember what I had studied before entering the hospital, and I was totally unable to absorb new material. I continue to have difficulty concentrating for extended periods of time.’
Collectively, the comments of people who have had ECT indicate loss of complex skills that underlie real-world roles such as student, professor, nurse or physicist, and often inability to return to those roles post-ECT
Robertson & Pryor state that it is clear that ECT also has a serious permanent effect on intellectual functions apart from memory.
Despite recommendations that psychiatrists inform patients of non-memory cognitive aftereffects (Calev, 1994) and warn them that ‘they are not going to function well on more tasks than they anticipate’ (Calev et al, 1995), patients are still routinely not informed about these effects; there is no mention of them in the recommended consent forms of the American Psychiatric Association (APA; 2001), the Royal College of Psychiatrists (2005: Appendix IV) or the manufacturers of ECT equipment. This may contribute to the consistent findings (Rose et al, 2003, 2005; Philpot et al, 2004) that half of people given ECT say they did not receive an adequate explanation of the treatment.
The current APA consent forms not only contain no warnings about adverse effects on cognition, but advise that ‘Most patients report that memory is actually improved by ECT’ (American Psychiatric Association, 2001). This statement is contradicted by all service-user research as well as the findings of SURE (2002) and NICE (2003); indeed, Scott (2005) remarked that NICE took ‘special note of the evidence from users that cognitive impairment after ECT often outweighed their perception of any benefit from it’.
*National Institute for Clinical Excellence (now the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, NICE)
For many people the effects of permanent amnesia and/or memory and cognitive disability negate any benefit sustained from ECT (National Institute for Clinical Excellence, 2003).
Patients should be clearly told that ECT may have serious and permanent effects on both memory ability and non-memory cognition.
In light of alarming findings that 50% of patients report receiving inadequate warnings of the potential side ffects of ECT, informed consent practices need to be revised. In particular, prospective patients should
be warned of the significant risk of permanent amnesia and the possibility of permanent memory and cognitive disability."
