ECT: Listening to Lived Experience

This episode holds space for education and lived experience, without judgment or pressure.

Your mental health journey deserves respect and informed consent. 

Today's guest is Lisa Conway

She can be found at https://authorlisac.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Welcome back. Today's episode is about a treatment that sparks a lot of emotion and a lot of debate. ECT or electroconvulsive therapy. This episode is not here to tell you ECT is good, it's not here to tell you ECT is bad. It's here to talk about why it exists, what it is, who it's offered to, and why some people strongly oppose it. My only goal is to create space for honest conversation, personal experience, and informed understanding. Because when something is controversial or misunderstood, shutting the conversation down helps no one. So let's talk openly, respectfully, and unfiltered. What is ECT therapy? Well, ECT stands for electro-convulsive therapy. It has existed for decades, but the version used today is very different from historical practices. Today's ECT involves anesthesia, muscle relaxance, brief electrical stimulation to trigger a controlled seizure inside the brain, a medical team that monitors you throughout, and multiple treatments over a series of weeks. ECT is not a first-line treatment. It's typically recommended when severe depression doesn't respond to other treatments, suicidal thoughts are intense and persistent, certain forms of bipolar disorder or psychosis are not improving. Some people report significant relief. Some people describe negative experiences. Some people come out grateful, and some come out feeling harmed. This episode is about acknowledging both realities and encouraging listeners to do their own research, ask the questions, and be an advocate for yourself. Today I'm joined by Lisa, who has personally experienced ECT, and she's going to share her personal experience and her family's experience about what she went through as a result of this. But I want to be clear, this episode is not about debating her story. Her lived experience is valid and her voice matters. So without further ado, here we go. So I'm Ellie. Thanks for coming on today. If you just want to start, uh introduce yourself and let us know a little bit about you.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

My name is Lisa Conway. I am a uh MSW master's in social work. Most of my work has been in the medical field with hospitals, nursing homes, home health, and finishing with home hospice. So I've always been taking care of other people. And I'm I'm my best person when I'm taking care of other people. And when I became the patient, I wasn't ready for that. And being the patient, I would I would run into people that I had worked with, which was even worse. Um but I became disabled because of my psychiatric problems. I was, I am bipolar, um, history of anorexia, OCD, um medication-resistant depression, I think they call it. And this year I I had had a lot of ECT treatments, electro-convulsive therapy treatments, but I didn't know until this year that I had over a hundred, which I wasn't prepared to know. I I figured it was maybe around 50 or 60 because with ECT, you lose your short-term memory. And with me, I I lost my long-term memory. I lost about 20 years. Um, and it doesn't come back. No one told me before I got my treatments that I could possibly have long-term damage. No one told me I would have cognitive problems with my memory, with speaking, with following directions. For example, last night I had I took my I'm training a second service dog because mine is is 10 years old. So it takes about two years, a good two years to train a service dog. The trainer knows what my background is, only because she helped me train my other dog. So when we were we were all out kind of in the store working with our own dogs, she came up to me and she said, Did I did I talk too fast? Do you understand what I what I said? Because I had a lot of information up there, and and it was appreciated because I can only remember really the first sentence of what you say. But as I went through the therapies and started dealing with the long-term effects, I realized there weren't any people out there that were ever warned by their psychiatrists that this was going to be a long-term problem, even if you even if you stopped your treatments after that, the damage would all already be done to you to your brain. So, um, what I did was um this is called shock. This is my book. Um, there's really only one other book out there that talks about the truth of electroconvulsive therapy, and there's thousands and thousands of people around the world, and people and I've talked to like people from Finland, um, I've talked to people from the UK, Canada, really, oh, Australia is a big one. Um, in our country, it's done a lot in California. And if you don't know about ECT, if you break it up, it says electro, which means electricity, convulsive means seizure, treatment. So what they do is they they you go to the hospital, they prep you, you put your gown on, you have to get an IV, and um they put electrodes on your head. It's hard, it's hard to talk about, so give me a little grace. It's okay, take your time. They put electrodes on your head, and usually it was three times a week, and there were usually five or six patients that were having it done, and they had it, they had us put in the um in the post anesthesia place, so where where people were waking up from all of their surgeries. Um, but all they had was a curtain that separated you from the other people. So if if you weren't the first person getting their treatment, you were listening to the other people get their treatments. Um, and that that bothered me a lot. When they when they connect the electrodes, um they put you to sleep, and the doctor sends pulses of electricity um through your brain, through the frontal lobe. Um, and they say all research says it's safe and effective. And when I look back into my medical records, the consent forms didn't say anything about this being a long-term cognitive loss possibility. And after I stopped my treatments, it didn't get better. And that's what I was told. I was told, give it time. Those exact words, give it time. And I went into my doctor's office every month for years, and I would say, I'm I'm I'm having my short-term memories and coming back, give it time. I'd have I'd have problems, I had night terrors, I don't know what to do. Give it time, give the medication time to work. And I was in the hospital on psych wards, in and out, like you wouldn't believe. I mean, they knew me, they knew my name, Lisa. So I feel guilty about coming back. I I'd feel guilty and and like I like I let them down. But they were really good because they said, Oh, you just need a tune-up, your car, you just need a tune-up, so it's okay. But the reason that I wrote the book was because I need people out there to know what our psychiatrists are doing, and the problem is there's no one to regulate them. When you get medication, the medication is approved by the FDA in our government, and the FDA gets their information from um from research journals, and these are journals that researchers have done very, very um, very controlled studies, and then they're published in medical journals, and then the FDA goes and they look at the medical journals, they may do research themselves, and then like a medication. You know how you get that pamphlet, it's like a four-page pamphlet for what like one little butt bottle of pills, right? It tells you, it tells you all the side effects because they have to tell you every last side effect that was that was mentioned by the people that were in the studies. Um also the FDA is the one that gives you the gives the doctors the parameters. So, what that means is the FDA says the minimum dose is this, and you can't give more than this dose, and and the maximum dose is this much. When the FDA was created, the ECT machine, the shock machine, was grandfathered in. So it was never regulated by the FDA, and all medical equipment is regulated by the FDA. So the problem is there's no parameters. So the doctor, if you're not, if you're not responding, then they they ink I say they up the volume, I say they up the volume, but they they increase they increase the electricity. And somewhere I read that the amount of electricity that they put through you is more than a police taser. Um, and I'm thinking, hmm. So what happens is while you're asleep, you have seizure, and it so the electricity is meant to give you a grandma seizure, and somehow they think that helps people, um and maybe in the short term it does. For me, I was suicidal many times, and that that got me out of that that mind frame. Okay, but I would always have to go back because I I was suicidal again. It didn't fix the problem, it it just gave me another problem, gave me a brain injury. So I wanted to write the book as a way of advocating for all the people all of us out there that were never told. Um, and you won't find a psych you won't find a psychiatrist. There's very few psychiatrists that will even say that it causes not even brain damage, but cognitive loss, um, which is kind of like the wording now that the medical field uses. I went to a um I went to a neurologist, I think last year, a neurologist in the area that I live. We we waited for the appointment for three months. When the doctor came in, he was kind of short and sweet, and said, I don't treat ECT patients, go back to your psychiatrist. So I here I am, I'm having horrible, horrible night terrors every night. Um I can't remember anything anybody says. Uh, I I couldn't remember half of my sons growing up. And one of my biggest problems is when I would um when I when I got my service dog, it was it was just a pet. But we noticed that number one, he came with me everywhere, which is like having a child, but he also um had this instinct for knowing direction. One of the things that happened to me as a result of the treatments is I can be I can be somewhere where I've been 20 times, and all of a sudden I get disoriented and I don't know where I am. It happened once when I was running, when I went to my parents' house, because I go there about uh maybe once a month and stay for about a week, and all of a sudden I didn't know where I was. Nothing looked familiar, and and I've run that route 30 or 40 times, and and nothing looked familiar. And I I had the thought to figure it out on the GPS, but by that time I was having a panic attack. Um, so I couldn't figure out the GPS, but I did know how to call my dad. Dad is always the one you call. And my dad, being a runner and also a cyclist, knew the knew the route very well. So here, you know, this this gold-color Toyota Prius um comes right by and just saves the day. And for that reason, I started treating my dog and training him to be a service dog. And one of one of the wonderful things he does is if if I go somewhere, wherever I am, I can be in the very back of the parking lot for Walmart. And as soon as I get out of Walmart, I'll tell the dog, find the car. And he will lead me all the way right to the car and sit down. And that was a lot of training on my part. That was a lot of training on my part. Um, and if I walked like around the house, if I um, you know, he would get me back to the house, he knows house. You know, if you train him for a certain word, then he connects it. So he became my life. And because I was running with him, and we were running long distances by that point, we were doing half marathons. I was running so much and consistently that my depression ended up almost going away. And so it's been about seven or eight years since uh since we we stopped doing anything with my medications. And it's that it's been that much time that I've been out of the hospital. I usually I would go I would go into the hospital three or four times a year to the psych to the psych unit. They they knew me very well. But so the depression, the depression got much better. What I didn't expect was um the side effects that I had from the treatments, from the ECT treatments, uh, my memory, um, my my ability to problem solve uh executive functioning things like doing doing more than one task at a time, um organizing anything like that. I I hadn't been able to do since I had the treatments, but the running kind of eased that up. And it was consistent running. And my my my dream had always been I wanted to run a marathon, and for years I thought there's no way, there's no way I'm ever gonna be able to run a marathon. And I was with the running group and I was running strong, and I thought I better run now because I don't know how long like my good brain is gonna be. Well, I was I was turned down by the local marathon because I had a service dog, and they said no no dogs on the course, including service dogs, which is against the law. Service dogs have to be wherever the public is allowed to go, a service dog must be allowed to go as well, unless it's an unsafe situation. Um, and if it's like you know, the dog can't go in the kitchen at a restaurant. He can go to a restaurant, right? And usually he'll he'll just lay under the table. But you know, because of like health issues, obviously they don't they don't want him in in the kitchen in a restaurant. So what what they were essentially doing was illegal, it was it's called discrimination with the Americans with Disabilities Act, but it was the same year that COVID came out, so they canceled the marathon.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Well, I'd already been training. And when I want to do something, I'm pretty pretty certain I'm gonna do it. So I went to my running friends, especially the ones that that run long distances and and do marathons. And I said, listen, I said, my my brain is good. It's it's working. Don't don't get me wrong, I still had a lot of problems, you know, with my memory and and and other things. It was awful, it's absolutely awful. But I was well enough to understand running a marathon and to to um to train to do it. So my group of friends helped me run a virtual marathon. We were doing during COVID, there were all these virtual races where you could you could run the course and um then you could submit whatever your time was, and you know, they would give you a medal or something like that. Well, I wasn't really interested in the medal, I was interested in running 26.2 miles, and from the beginning of the race for me and Teddy, we always had someone running with me. We had bicycles with me, we had people holding traffic so I could so. I could run through uh if so I could run through intersections. And there were people on the side of the road with their hatch back up. So they had they had, you know, gallons of water so we could water Teddy down so he wouldn't get so he wouldn't get dehydrated and he wouldn't get over, you know, um over what's the call? What's the name? Overheated, overheated, so he wouldn't get overheated. And there were people running with me the entire the entire time. And sometimes I had groups run running with me, and sometimes I just had one friend or two friends, but there were always people on bicycles making sure that it was safe, and also these people were telling me where to run. They were telling me where to run because I didn't know, and I wouldn't know. You you could tell me a thousand times, and I could train for it, how to train for it, but I would never know how to do it by myself, which was the whole point of having the service dog. Right. I'm really, really slow runner, so there's not a lot of people in the back of the pack that you can follow because you're that you're that slow. So my my service dog couldn't follow the person in front of us because we were so far behind that there wasn't a person in front of us. And I did the whole 26.2. I came into Courthouse Square in front of the courthouse and the federal building, and the group of people that were there were absolutely my my family was there, my dad was there, I'm very close with my dad, and it was because of him, because he became a runner, it's because of him that I started running. Um, and then of course, one of my one of my wonderful coaches set up for the news to come, and so we were on the newscast, you know, in in the in the evening. Um, so I found that exercise really helped my symptoms. It doesn't get rid of the symptoms because the damage is already done, and no one knows what the long-term problems are going to be. In my in my thinking, it has to be something with memory loss in terms of dementia or something like that. So all I can deal with really is today. I already forgot yesterday. That's done. It's like it never existed. And when my mom asks, what am I doing for Thanksgiving? I'm like, I don't know. I can deal with today, maybe tomorrow too. But not that far ahead. So I wrote my book to advocate for people, and nobody nobody's been listening to us. We're we're we're you know, we're we're we're beating down doors and asking asking doctors, and the doctors will not validate that our problems were caused by our shock treatments. Even though I had a master's in social work and and worked in hospitals and and in hospice, and I could I could juggle 30 patients and and do it well, but they wouldn't say it was the shock treatments that did that. So there's a lot of things happening behind the scenes right now with some research, some really good research being done and um being you know getting into medical journals. So it's it's slow steps. Um if anybody that is listening to to the podcast, international ECT survivor group is a Facebook group, and we probably have like 700, 800, 900 people in it, and it's a support group on on Facebook because there are no support groups, not only that, there's no support groups for our families, and my family really went through hell. I mean, I thought it was bad for me, but for them to watch what was happening to me, I think was more traumatic because I I was there, I understood it, but in a way I wasn't there. So now my um I guess I found my my social work purpose to to advocate for for mental illness for for people that are not being listened to. And if I have to be the the poster child for shock therapy, then then that's what I'll do. Whatever it takes to get people's attention. So I'll show you the book again because the more people that read the book, the more people can tell other people about the book, and hopefully by one telling someone else, telling someone else, somewhere along the line, people's antennas are gonna go up. Right, and it's gonna be the right people. So I'm I'm I'm I'm everywhere doing podcasts and and book signings and um whenever I can. Somebody's gotta speak up. And I never thought I would be the patient, but I am. So the social worker in me never died. They they didn't electrocute that out of me. And I only do that because if you don't have a sense of humor about this, you can't survive. You really, you really somewhere along the line, you have to accept it and just move forward. So sometimes I really make some cracks that uh makes other people upset. But for me, it's like, well, they they already they already jolted me a hundred times, you know. This isn't gonna do it. So um, like I said, you have to have a little bit of a sense of humor about it, right? So that's that's me. That's that's who I am, that's my story. There's a lot more I could go on and on, but I'm not going to.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

That's okay. So just for anyone listening who's maybe interested in reading your book, um, does it go really in depth about everything, or is it kind of like a general overview?

SPEAKER_00 29:54

No, it it's a really it's a memoir.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

It and I call it a psychiatric memoir and talks about my family and how I grew up and how I um when I went to college, I had to be in a an eating disorder unit just eating disorder unit for three months. Um, and basically my family said if I didn't do it, I couldn't go back to college. And so many people were telling me there's something wrong, I don't look good, why aren't you eating? Um, but that was something that was building for for years and years. Um, so it talks about like the psychiatric things, and yes, I chose to include the procedure of shock therapy. I was afraid I wouldn't remember anything because obviously they they shocked my brain, uh and I had that long-term memory loss, but I sat down because I had closed that door, I had closed that door to my life that it didn't exist. So when I opened that door again, I remembered every last detail. I even remember exactly what the gentleman transporter looked like. I remember his face, and he would always be the one to roll my my stretcher down to where they did the treatments. Him and another gentleman, younger gentleman, uh African-American, he was really funny. You needed a little humor to kind of take care of how much you know, anxiety was right there, right? But I remember wishing, please let it be me that he does first. I didn't like to hear, and you didn't hear much, but you heard it and you knew what was happening, and I remembered, and I don't think I'm ever gonna forget what happened, but I thought it was important to put it in the book so people understood.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

This I was put under anesthesia over a hundred times. I had grandma seizures, over a hundred grandma seizures, which can't be good for anybody because neurologists are giving their epilepsy patients medicine to prevent seizures. I wish I had put it together in the beginning, but everything, everything, every doctor we talked to, everyone we talked to said it was safe and effective. And everywhere now it still says it's safe and effective, and it's not. So I need to tell people because they they need to know ahead of this, because the the consent doesn't say that, it doesn't tell you ahead of time you could have damage done. They they don't they don't even put it in the consent, and that's that's the biggest problem. So there's no transparency. That's that's the current word that everybody uses. There's there's no transparency. The the doctors are not telling you the whole deal. So yeah, I I included I I included a lot and and I used journals, I always had journals. I used my journals to help me write the book because I I don't know how many journals I found, but when I was in the hospital, I always had my journal with me, so I would write down what happened. So it was my journals that helped me write the book because obviously I was having problems with my memory. Never thought they would come in handy like that, but apparently they did. Right. So so yeah, yeah. You have any other questions, or I'm very open about it. You have to be.

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Yeah, so over that time frame when you had the hundred treatments, was it like over months, years? How long about?

SPEAKER_00 34:19

I think um the brain injury affected my concept of time, for example. I I thought to me, it feels like I've been going to my speech therapist since about January. And this week I found out I've been going to her since last January. So my concept of time is is very, you know, mixed up. How old was I when this happened, or how old, you know, how how old uh was my son when this happened? I I I'm not very reliable, but what happened was I would have episodes, and with the bipolar, um, you kind of you go manic, and as as far up as you go is is that as far down as you go. So you it the seriousness and the lethality of it because you're suicidal puts you in the hospital. So I would have it would be up and down. I'd be okay for a while, and I'd be functioning for a while, and then all of a sudden I I was suicidal, and they put me in the hospital, and we went right to we tried so many medications. I don't know how many medications I've been on. So we did do that, but nothing worked. Um, so this was over a course of about I'm guessing around 12 years.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

And when you when you go and you have your treatments, the general way they do it is a couple of weeks they do it three times a week, and then a couple of weeks they'll do it two times a week, and then they'll do it one time a week. And some people actually go back once a month for for maintenance, for maintenance ECT. Um I never got into that, and I'm very glad that I didn't go into that. That was when we stopped the trip. I don't understand how did the doctor in any way, shape, or form, because he was he was he was a smart. I knew he was smart because I had seen him in presentations. So how did how did he possibly think a hundred seizures would help me and not hurt me? It's not consistent. He's brilliant, right? He's smart, he he he knows the chemical compounds of this, that, and the other thing. But he's okay with giving me over a hundred seizures. No, no, he knew it was gonna cause damage, he just didn't tell me. So it's happening to people all over. But I try like I said, I try to be open. So, you know, if you have any questions, really.

SPEAKER_02 37:18

Yeah, no, I mean you I think you answered most of my questions because uh I'm also in the medical field, and you know, even as a nurse, we don't really hear about that unless I'm sure people who are like psychiatric nurses or uh um I'm sure they hear about it a lot more, but like um, you know, we don't this just not something, you know. So if I had a patient come to me and it was like, hey, I'm doing this, I would be like, Oh, oh, okay, like I I worked in the I was a medical social worker.

SPEAKER_00 37:53

I was a medical social worker. I had you I had worked on psych units, and I didn't know they were still doing it.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

The I think the only reason they they think it's safe and effective is because they're doing it while you're under anesthesia, they're not watching you long term to see what your side effects are. If they did that, then it would be a different story. Or how about let's do an MRI of your brain before the treatments and compare that to an MRI after the treatments, right? But they don't do that, so most times people are like, they still do that, yeah. Uh and and some people in my family, I have a lot of nurses in my family, were were asked to um to be part of the team that that helps with the with the treatments. Um, and a lot of times in he would always have students, so medical students would would be there and watch. To tell you the truth, actually, the medical students were the ones putting the electrodes on my head, which now thinking now back, I'm like, uh, that does not sound like a good idea. My my brain is different from your brain. Maybe it's bigger, maybe it's probably smaller. Okay, it's probably smaller, but maybe it's not in the same, there's no brain map done. Right. So, how do you know exactly where to put that that little piece of electricity?

SPEAKER_02 39:27

And I'm wondering, you know, sometimes like in the healthcare world, we get so on track, you know, like this is my specialty, this is what I focus on, so on and so forth, you know. But we don't look at the whole person. Sure, maybe it helps your mental health at the time. So I guess technically, sure, we could say it's effective. But obviously, in the long run, the you're the one living your life, you're the one dealing with this every day, day in and day out, not not to mention even your family. Um, but I think I think what you're doing is is great because I think a lot of times a lot of people are afraid to speak up because you know, we're the professionals, we're supposed to be the ones protecting you, and so on and so forth. And um I just think that healthcare needs to go in a different direction, more of a holistic whole body. Yes, do I think science is necessary? Yes, are medications necessary, surgery is so on and so forth. Of course, there is something for everything, but we need to take the whole person into uh, you know, into our plan instead of oh well, I only treat your shoulder, so I'm only worrying about your shoulder and nothing else.

SPEAKER_00 40:49

It used to be like that, you know, years ago, the doctor didn't have all those MRIs and x-rays, so they went according to your symptoms, so they treated the whole body. But now, if the test says negative, if if the test says no broken bones, you don't have a broken bone. Okay, if the test says doesn't doesn't show any any brain damage, which the brain damage from ECT would not show up on on uh on a MRI because you know there's no tumor or anything like that. It it it works in a cellular way, so they're killing brain cells. So that's not going to show up on a regular MRI. Um, and that's the way the doctors do it now. If your blood work is fine, hey, you're fine, go home. Even when you still feel like junk. Oh, I must be okay, and I'm not.

SPEAKER_02 41:57

Right. And you we hear that often, you know. Oh, I went in and got my labs, and my labs are fine, so I must be okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:04

You know, so you say that I say that all the time on social media, and it's not funny, but it's kind of like you know, just yeah, they they really need to go back to being diagnostic doctors and looking looking at the symptoms, looking at your way of life, and and kind of piecing together the puzzle. But they don't they don't do that, and there's a specialist, and if you say say say something, that that the that doctor will say, no, I don't, I don't, I don't deal with that, and then you have to have another doctor come in and you know give his opinion because he's a specialist. So uh our our medical system could could use could use a lot of work.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

Yeah, we need to practice health, not medicine.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

That's a good way to say it. That's a really good way to say it. I agree. I agree.

SPEAKER_02 43:03

Um, sorry, and then sorry, sorry, so we're going back to your book. Is there a specific place it can be found or can it be found anywhere?

SPEAKER_00 43:12

It it can be found. I'll give you the the address. It's author, a u t o r lisa, l-i-sa, and my last initial is a c at gmail.com. That's my that's my website. It's right there. It has a biography of me and uh a kind of a cool biography of Teddy too. So we put them both on there.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

Oh, good, good. That's great. And what kind of dog is Teddy? Because I feel like I need to know this. Teddy is a border collie lab mix.

SPEAKER_00 43:50

Oh he has long hair. He's border collie's are usually smaller dogs, and they're Herding dogs. So his sense of direction comes from his ancestry. They have the concept of where they're at, where things need to go. If you just go on YouTube and do a search for border collies, border collies at work, you'll see them and you'll see how fast they run. A border collie in a regular day's work, you know, in the fields, they run 10 miles a day. They're running all day. So for Teddy, it was just kind of like a trot. It wasn't a you know a big thing. But he's he's very um he's chilled out a lot. He's 10 years old, but but he was very um energetic. And if you're not ready to give that dog a place where they can get out their energy, they're gonna destroy your whole home. Because that's what he was doing. So he really and and if he doesn't if he doesn't get out for for walks or runs, uh he he gets punchy. He gets a little punchy. So um yeah, and he's a beautiful, he's a he's a beautiful dog, he's soft and loving, and and he he knows as soon as my anxiety is going up. We're very connected, and and I've had people say that doctors, the even the dog trainer said he's he's pretty connected with you because I know you're you're very anxious right now. He just picked up on it, or he'll come from across the room and he'll come over and sit right by me, and he'll he'll put his head on my lap, and it and maybe I didn't realize it at the time, but I was getting upset. So um, yeah, there's a big connection with with people and their service talks.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

That's great.

SPEAKER_02 46:22

Um, I think you covered a lot of stuff. I learned a lot of stuff today. I said thank you so much for sharing and really just being vulnerable. And you know, if there's other people out there, I hope that this reaches them and you know they can hear it and they can you gave a couple of resources plus your book. So um, again, thank you for that. Is there anything else you want to share, or maybe we didn't touch on that you think people should know?

SPEAKER_00 46:49

Um well, I'll say one thing about the medications. I was on a lot of medications, they tried me on this, that, and the other thing. Um but medications, especially psychiatric medications, usually take a couple of weeks to work. You're a nurse, so no. When you're on a psych ward, I hate to say it like that, but when you're on a psych ward, your insurance wants you out. Your insurance doesn't want to pay for you to stay there two weeks to see if the medication is working. Some of them start like right away, and and some of them it has to build up in your system first. So a lot of times because the medication isn't working, right? It hasn't had enough time to work, but the insurance wants you out because they don't want to pay for you to be in a hospital for two weeks or three weeks, maybe five days, which isn't enough to let a medication work. So it's it's not just it's not just doctors, hospitals, insurance, it's it's it's everything together.

SPEAKER_02 48:07

That's also a good point, because a lot of people don't get well, a lot of people don't get to deal with that insurance side of it. Like as a nurse, there were years of my career I was like, oh, I have no idea. Like I couldn't tell you a single thing about the insurance. I just know like you have blue cross, so that's an insurance company, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 48:31

So well, I was a medical social worker and I I knew about insurance. Um, because when someone had when I was on the regular hospital floors, when someone was there for too long, the case manager, which was usually a nurse, would come to me and say, You have to get them out now. And and I was the discharge planner. Um and and over time I started educating people about Medicare. And then we we came up with the Medicare Advantage plans, the supplemental plans, and Part D for your medicines. So I was the one that that did a lot of education that way, which is which is why I know the insurance didn't want to pay for me to be in the hospital for two weeks.

SPEAKER_02 49:23

Right. That's just sad. It really is. It's just horrible. But again, thank you for your time today, and thank you for being vulnerable and telling us your story. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you again, and I hope the rest of your day um is smooth and not too not too crazy.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

You too. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

Bye. Lisa, thank you for being willing to talk openly about something that many people feel afraid to bring up. So now that we've had a personal perspective, I want to take a moment to share the objective information. Not to counter anything that was said, but to give listeners a complete picture so that they can explore further. According to evidence-based practice, ECT is effective for some people with treatment-resistant depression or very severe symptoms. ECT does carry risks. The risks that are listed include temporary memory issues, confusion, and in some cases, more persistent memory concerns. Experiences vary widely. Some people feel significantly better, while others feel worse. ECT is voluntary in most places and should always involve informed consent. There are alternatives to ECT, such as TMS, ketamine therapy, medication therapy, and just regular talk therapy. So listeners, I strongly encourage you to research all of these options, talk to trusted professionals, and consider your personal values, symptoms, and safety. This podcast is never medical advice. It is a conversation, education, reflection, and human experience. No matter what treatment path you take, traditional, holistic, medical, or alternative, you deserve informed consent, compassionate care, options, respect, and the ability to ask questions without judgment. If you or someone you love is facing a big treatment decision, here are three questions that can help in any situation. Do I feel fully informed about the benefits and the risks? Do I feel pressured or supported? And what treatment aligns best with my values, needs, and long-term well-being? There's no shame in exploring, no shame in choosing, and absolutely no shame in changing your mind. Lisa, again, thank you for sharing your truth with such courage and openness. Your story will help others feel less alone and more empowered in their own decision making. To everyone listening, if you have experience with ECT, positive and negative, or if you're navigating mental health treatments, you're welcome here. You're not broken, you're not dramatic, you're not alone. In fact, you're human, and you deserve care that feels safe, informed, and compassionate. That's it for today. Join us next week while we talk about autism. Thank you for being here, for being human, and for letting yourself feel. Just a reminder, this podcast is all heart, not healthcare. Please talk to a professional for medical advice. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Patreon, and TikTok at Unfiltered Feels Podcast. Share this with someone who needs it, or leave a review. And don't forget, the things you're feeling, you're not alone. I'll see you next time.