A mental health treatment with a dark past will be a pivotal part of the new medical office building on the UCHealth Longs Peak campus next year.
Crews have been working on the four-story outpatient medical office buildings to the east of the hospital and surgery center since last year, according to a UCHealth news release. The facility will be named the UCHealth Longs Peak Medical Center and is expected to be completed in summer 2022.
One of the services offered at the medical center is the UCHealth Refractory Depression Clinic, which will be moving from the hospital, the news release stated. The clinic will offer patients with severe depression and other mental disorders medication management, psychotherapy and electroconvulsive therapy.
Electroconvulsive therapy — in which small electric currents are passed through the brain — is for those who have tried other conventional means to deal with their mental health disorders and are still suffering, Dr. Konoy Mandal, a psychiatrist who will be leading the clinic, said.
“When other interventions including medications and talk therapy have just not gotten them to feel completely well, we can use electric fields and magnetic fields to get it done,” Mandal said.
He admits electroshock therapy was misused and misunderstood in the past. “It really sucked at first,” Mandal said. Electroshock was often deployed on a fairly large scale basis on patients for a variety of afflictions and often without anesthesia,” he said.
“For about 50 percent it helped but the other 50 percent” suffered massive side effects, Mandal said.
Science can now mimic the way neurons communicate between themselves, thanks to MRI scans and other technology, he said. Patients using Electroconvulsive,or ECT, therapy have about 1% of the side effects of ECT even just 10 years ago, Mandal said.
ECT is similar to using electric currents to restore a normal rhythm to patients with an irregular heartbeat. It is performed by a team that includes a psychiatrist as well as a specialty-trained nursing and anesthesia team. ECT initially requires three treatments a week, eventually transitioning to treatments every few months and then to limited maintenance, the website stated.
The clinic at UCHealth Longs Peak Hospital offers ECT on an outpatient basis, said Mandal, who is certified by the International Society of ECT and neurostimulation and has performed more than 25,000 ECT treatments.
UCHealth’s website states ECT treatments can have “life-changing benefits” for those with treatment resistant depression or bipolar disorder:
- A high percentage of patients attain remission, in addition to response.
- The treatment has the strongest anti-suicidal effect of any psychiatric intervention.
- The treatment gives real-time evidence it is working.
Usually, Mandal said, “70% of our patients ride off into the sunset and are well for at least five-to-10 years. Some patients need a little more maintenance every three years.”
“For many people, this offers them the relief they desperately need,” Mandal said.
The clinic — like other services offered at the new medical centers — will offer benefits to people throughout the region, Longs Peak Hospital President Lonnie Cramer said. “This type of service is why we are here,” Cramer said. “To help people in need.”
A mental health treatment with a dark past will be a pivotal part of the new medical office building on the UCHealth Longs Peak campus next year.
Crews have been working on the four-story outpatient medical office buildings to the east of the hospital and surgery center since last year, according to a UCHealth news release. The facility will be named the UCHealth Longs Peak Medical Center and is expected to be completed in summer 2022.
One of the services offered at the medical center is the UCHealth Refractory Depression Clinic, which will be moving from the hospital, the news release stated. The clinic will offer patients with severe depression and other mental disorders medication management, psychotherapy and electroconvulsive therapy.
Electroconvulsive therapy — in which small electric currents are passed through the brain — is for those who have tried other conventional means to deal with their mental health disorders and are still suffering, Dr. Konoy Mandal, a psychiatrist who will be leading the clinic, said.
“When other interventions including medications and talk therapy have just not gotten them to feel completely well, we can use electric fields and magnetic fields to get it done,” Mandal said.
He admits electroshock therapy was misused and misunderstood in the past. “It really sucked at first,” Mandal said. Electroshock was often deployed on a fairly large scale basis on patients for a variety of afflictions and often without anesthesia,” he said.
“For about 50 percent it helped but the other 50 percent” suffered massive side effects, Mandal said.
Science can now mimic the way neurons communicate between themselves, thanks to MRI scans and other technology, he said. Patients using Electroconvulsive,or ECT, therapy have about 1% of the side effects of ECT even just 10 years ago, Mandal said.
ECT is similar to using electric currents to restore a normal rhythm to patients with an irregular heartbeat. It is performed by a team that includes a psychiatrist as well as a specialty-trained nursing and anesthesia team. ECT initially requires three treatments a week, eventually transitioning to treatments every few months and then to limited maintenance, the website stated.
The clinic at UCHealth Longs Peak Hospital offers ECT on an outpatient basis, said Mandal, who is certified by the International Society of ECT and neurostimulation and has performed more than 25,000 ECT treatments.
UCHealth’s website states ECT treatments can have “life-changing benefits” for those with treatment resistant depression or bipolar disorder:
- A high percentage of patients attain remission, in addition to response.
- The treatment has the strongest anti-suicidal effect of any psychiatric intervention.
- The treatment gives real-time evidence it is working.
Usually, Mandal said, “70% of our patients ride off into the sunset and are well for at least five-to-10 years. Some patients need a little more maintenance every three years.”
“For many people, this offers them the relief they desperately need,” Mandal said.
The clinic — like other services offered at the new medical centers — will offer benefits to people throughout the region, Longs Peak Hospital President Lonnie Cramer said. “This type of service is why we are here,” Cramer said. “To help people in need.”
