Posted by Mark H. on May 15, 2000, at 18:00:42
In reply to A cliched subject, now mine, posted by Arias on May 15, 2000, at 15:21:08
Dear Arias,
Obviously, I've grown very comfortable with this group of people in Babble-land, because I'm willing to ask the seemingly stupidest of questions without embarrassment.
Truly, I hope someone can tell me why having a seizure is a "good" thing if it's induced in a hospital and produced by application of direct current under general anaesthesia (surely one of the crudest tools in our box of depression remedies), but a "very bad" thing if it's produced by an anti-depressant, EVEN WHEN THE PATIENT (you, in this case) EXPERIENCES MARKED IMPROVEMENT?
Let's assume you don't drive, for the moment, when under the influence of prescription drugs, and that you don't operate heavy equipment or fly commercial jetliners for a living.
My question is about the seizure itself, not about the impact of a seizure on others or the environment. The author of Toxic Psychiatry, whose writings I take with a HUGE grain of salt, claims that seizures physically damage the brain, and that any "anti-depressant" effect is simply the body's normal production of endorphins and euphoria in response to head injury.
How do the proponents of ECT answer this claim?
I have long longed for an easy, limited way to give myself a seizure, short of electrocuting myself. What would be wrong with developing a drug that gave a short, predictable seizure as needed, taken at bedtime? Might something less than a full-body reaction give anti-depressant results? I'm passingly familiar with the work being done with magnetic currents, but the effects so far are very short-lived and return to depression almost guaranteed in refractive cases (the only cases it is being used on last time I checked).
At the core of this is this basic question: is having a seizure a bad thing in itself or not?
Best wishes,
Mark H.
poster:Mark H.
thread:33497
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000508/msgs/33517.html