TAMPA, Fla. — For many years now, the best treatment for clinical depression has been anti-depressant medications. However, there are some promising new treatments: Ketamine and Transcranial magnetic stimulation.
There is another treatment that's not new, but it's effective and it seems to be making a comeback.
Electro-Convulsive Therapy, also known as "shock therapy" is one of the most effective treatments for depression that isn't improving with medication. It's a procedure that's been portrayed as somewhat barbaric, but new developments in how it's done are helping patients give this treatment serious consideration.
60 Minutes featured a story showing Kitty Dukakis undergoing Electroconvulsive therapy. Kitty's husband is retired Democratic politician Michael Dukakis. You might remember he ran for president in 1988. Kitty told 60 Minutes' Anderson Cooper she had no problem with her procedure being broadcast since it is the only treatment that has helped her chronic depression.
"I'm convinced that if I can be that public that it will help others," Kitty Dukakis said.
University of South Florida Health psychiatrist Dr. Ryan Wagoner said the procedure has changed over the years.
"So for example, now, we use general anesthesia to put the person to sleep," Wagoner said. "We use medications to help prevent them from contracting their muscles and causing any sort of injury through that. So, it is a much more controlled process than perhaps in the past."
Wagoner says the best way to describe ECT: It's like hitting a reset button on a computer, but it's rebooting the brain.
"The responses that we've seen with it are quite good," Wagoner said. "So oftentimes, when people haven't found relief with the medication or other type of therapy, ECT may be that nice next step in order to get things under better control.
"Then the person might be able to return to something like medications, but yeah, I've seen some very very good responses to ECT. It's a very effective treatment."
The real message we want to get across here: there are effective treatments for depression besides anti-depressant medications, that can work quickly and help a person get their life back.
With the suicide rate continuing to rise across the country, we want people to know there is help and it's working for other people who thought there was no hope.
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