Soooo. I had a consultation with a psychiatrist about TMS & ECT, on Tuesday. The visit was 2 hours long. I have decided to try ECT, starting in August of this year. I am hoping that it improves my mental health and cognitive functioning in the long term. But my short-term memory will likely be extremely impaired during the initial course of ECT treatment. But I feel like it’s my last hope.
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From what I read ECT is bad for cognition and is only used in treatment resistant depression and ocd. Weird that your Dr prescribed it. What are your diagnosis?
I hope it works well for you Ocelot.
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My doctor said it is also approved for bipolar disorder, and since I have schizoaffective disorder bipolar type, he said that I still have a high chance that my insurance will cover it. He has been seeing patients for ECT for … I think 12 years… and he said he’s had many patients with SzA who had improvement. He mentioned some bad cases, too, but most people had good results.
So, I’m hopeful.
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I don’t want to torpedo your good feelings, but my father went through ECT and it zapped his short-term memory. He did okay with it (he was bipolar), and initially he was recovering, but it required “maintenance” treatments, which he was unwilling to undergo. In the end, he committed suicide via shotgun. I feel I’d be doing everyone who is looking at ECT a disservice by not warning of what can go wrong. Just a warning, not a guarantee. If we have learned anything yet, it’s that we’re all different and so are our responses.
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I did it and all it did was screw my memory. I personally would stay away from it, but wish you luck and hope you get better results. 
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ECT is like last resort thing when you absolutely have no control of yourself. Also its not a fix and you need to do several. All the time you given anesthesia just like in surgery and that itself can give lot of cognitive impairment.
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I asked my psychiatrist about ect and tms he said those are not for sz.
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