After two suicide attempts and psychotic episodes that put her in the hospital several times, 45-year-old Danille still found nothing to quiet her tortured mind. Danielle, a junior executive at a Fortune 500 company, said she suffered a mental breakdown from a bad reaction to a prescription medication she took in February for her skin.
“I wasn’t a wallflower, I was someone who was always capable and happy, that’s why it was so hard for me to understand what was happening to me,” said Danielle, who is on medical leave from her job and asked that her last name not be used.
She said she spent most of the summer in an almost catatonic state in her home in Conifer, and the medications she took to shake her malaise made her feel worse. “I spent most of the summer sitting on my patio furniture, I didn't have any appetite, I didn’t have any energy, I wore the same clothes for days,” she said.
Then she learned about the Refractory Depression Clinic at UCHealth Longs Peak campus in Longmont, which opened over a year ago. Her psychiatrist suggested she try the clinic’s electroconvulsive (ECT) therapy program, which involves passing small electric currents through the brain while the patient is under general anesthesia.
Danielle recalls movies like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”, in which patients are hooked up for electroshock treatments without use of anesthesia. She admits the theatrical portrayals of long-ago movies shook her. “I was terrified,” Danielle said.
Still, she met with the clinic’s director, Dr. Konoy Mandal, on Sept. 16.
“He was very accommodating,” Danielle said. “I told him about all the medications I had been trying and they didn’t work. He said he thought I would be a good candidate for the program.”
On Sept. 20, Danielle checked into the clinic as an outpatient. She met with the clinic’s nurses and Mandal to prepare for the 20-minute procedure and was gently put under anesthesia. She awoke with little or no side effects and spent the night with her husband camping at St. Vrain State Park, outside of Longmont.
“That was the first night I had slept since February,” Danielle said. “I awoke with a sense of calm, something I had not felt in a long time.”
Mandal told the Leader in November that ECT is used for patients with severe depression or bipolar disorder who have not responded to traditional medication or psychotherapy. “For some people, this really is the last resort for them,” Mandal said.
ECT acts on the brain much like pacemakers do for the heart, Mandal said. Electric currents restore the brain’s rhythms to a normal pace and in many cases reverse symptoms of certain mental health conditions, he said.
“This is one of the most evidence-based interventions in psychiatric medicine to get a patient into remission,” Mandal said.
ECT is also safe because specialists can mimic the way neurons communicate between themselves and now know where to aim, Mandal said. Current ECT programs have about one percent of the side-effects of ECT ten years ago, he said.
Still, ECT remains in the shadows and most people are surprised to find it is still widely practiced, according to Psychiatric Times. Even many psychiatrists are opposed to its wide-spread use, the publication states.
However, almost all of the controversy about ECT is anecdotal opinion, unsupported by evidence, Psychiatric Times states. “In fact, there is a remarkably wide gap between what anti-ECT activists claim and the very substantial body of clinical and scientific evidence supporting its efficacy and safety,” the Times states.
By the third week of her treatment, Danielle said her depression scores reached zero. She is now off of most of her medications and returns to Longmont for followup treatments once every two weeks. She said she is almost back to her old self.
“I am hoping I will soon come off my medication and phase out of treatment,” Danielle said. “I am so grateful to the clinic and Dr. Mandal. I feel like I can live again.”
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