Issue link: https://kusm-wichita.uberflip.com/i/1510906
15 "I first saw (ECT) in medical school. I did not really understand it at the time, but I saw how eective it was. Seeing how people improve and being able to be hands-on with patients is what drew me to it." — Shelby Nix, M.D., fourth-year resident physician, Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences Randle McMurphy in the 1975 film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." In a harrowing scene, McMurphy is punished for his misbehavior with a primitive form of ECT administered without anesthesia. Cinema history aside, ECT is now understood to be a life-changing — and sometimes lifesaving — intervention for many patients suering from severe depression, mania or catatonia. Public figures such as Kitty Dukakis, wife of former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, and actress Carrie Fisher have spoken publicly about how they have benefitted from ECT. Dukakis even released a memoir and participated in a documentary about her experience. Cindy believes it's important for people to talk about their experience with ECT, which she says "gave my life back to me," after a 43-year battle with depression. To an observer, it may seem as though the procedure was over almost before it started. In fact, the electroconvulsive therapy treatment lasted less than five minutes. Colloquially known as "shock treatment," there is a wide gulf between the public perception of ECT and its reality as a safe, highly eective intervention for patients with severe or treatment-resistant mental illness, says Jana Lincoln, M.D., clinical associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at KU School of Medicine-Wichita. Cindy, a 69-year-old patient of Dr. Lincoln's, began receiving ECT treatments in 2017 after a suicide attempt and subsequent hospitalization. "The idea of (ECT) horrified me at first," she says. Perhaps the biggest contributor to the stigma around ECT is Jack Nicholson's Oscar-winning portrayal of In an operating room, a patient receives anesthesia and is monitored by doctors as paddles are placed on his head. An EEG shows seizures, and minutes later the patient wakes again. Treat Mental Illness