How to cure Insanity?
Posted on | Friday 10 June 2011 | No Comments
The idea of the use of electricity to cure insanity all came when fish was discovered to cure headache way back in the 1500’s. In a study conducted by Italian scientists Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini in 1939, they successfully treated a man who suffered from schizophrenia. (Schizophrenia is a mental illness in which the person suffers from distorted thinking, hallucinations and reduced ability to feel normal emotions.) The patient fully recovered after undergoing a total of 11 treatments.
The success of Cerleti and Bini’s study led to the widespread use of Electroconvulsive Therapy as a cure to insanity in the 1940’s and the 1950’s. Doctors then used high voltage of electric currents and patients were not given anesthesia at all. With the high voltage of electric currents exceeding the level the body can tolerate, the body cannot tolerate, the procedure resulted to a painful treatment and even to the breakage of bones.
ECT came to its notoriety when doctors and nurses used electricity to punish unruly patients. This horrifying act was many times depicted in the fictional film, “One flew over the Cuckoo’s News” where the nursing assistant punishes the patient with electroshock therapy everytime he gets unruly and in trouble with the assistant.
The use of the ECT declined when drugs were discovered in the late 1950’s and the early 1960′w. Today, ECT has made a comeback but unlike in the past, has undergone developments and is made less painful. Like any other medical treatments, patients are first screened by a psychiatrist if they are candidates for an ECT treatment. Patients are given anesthesia and muscle relaxant for them to feel less pain.
There are two types of modern-day ECT, the unilateral and the bilateral. In the unilateral, electrodes are attached to only one side of the head while on both sides of the head for bilateral.
Immediate side effects of ECT include headaches, muscle ache, nausea and confusion. These side effects occur after the first few hours of treatment but eventually are calmed and back to normal. Also, some patients may experience memory loss for days, weeks or months. The range of memory loss varies depending on what type of ECT was used. Patients who have undergone the unilateral ECT have reported an immediate recovery than those patients who have undergone the bilateral ECT.
Surprisingly, medical professionals cannot fully explain how the ECT works. They believe the ECT procedure temporarily alters some of the electrochemical processes of the brain.
ECT treatment has gone a long way and has achieved developments: from painful to painless and from a horrifying to a humane treatment. Despite the failure of scientists to explain how ECT fully works, people have found it helpful to ease pains. Surely as scientists continue their studies, ECT will again have innovations to make ECT the safest and the best option to cure insanity.
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