Ray Cabral has become a regular at Rhode Island Hospital. It started after he came to the hospital with seizures.
"I got out of the hospital and after that I just, I just felt isolated with people. I couldn't talk to anyone. I felt very isolated where I just wanted to stay by myself. I couldn't communicate with any of my friends," he said.
Cabral was in the throes of depression. He was hospitalized three times and medication didn't help.
Dr. Anthony Gallo, a psychiatrist at Rhode Island Hospital, suggested he try electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) or shock therapy.
"It's very sad that even as a medical student, my only reference before seeing ECT was 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', and looking back and trying to show patients modern accurate descriptions of ECT, I can't find any in the modern medicine," Gallo said.
"I was scared. In fact, I'll say this now. My roommate said to me, 'You're never going to be the same' and I'm going, 'Oh my God' and he was right. I never been the same and for the better," Cabral said.
Gallo said that Cabral was given an IV placement. Fluids would be started and once it became time for his procedure, Cabral would be wheeled in.
Cabral was given medicine to put him to sleep.
"We use ECT paddles and there's two configurations that we use. Once the machine (tells us) I have a good connection, I press the paddles down. It takes about three or four seconds and then electrical stimulus is given that lasts anywhere between a half a second to four seconds long," Gallo said.
Gallo said it's not exactly clear why ECT works.
"We know that ECT does lead to re-growth in particular areas of the brain involved in depression including the hypocampus, and we think that might have something to do with why ECT works," Gallo said.
Downsides may include some memory loss, which Gallo said is usually nothing significant. For Cabral, that wasn't a problem.
"When I started taking the ECT, it was remarkable how everything just opened up for me. I was lucky, very fortunate," Cabral said.
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