Electroconvulsive Therapy for Chronic Pain

Don’t fall for the latest dangerous treatment being touted for chronic pain: electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). ECT involves sending electric currents through the brain to trigger a brief seizure, under general anesthesia. It has historically been used to treat severe depression and other mental health conditions but now is being considered as a treatment for chronic pain.

There have been a number of case reports published about treating chronic pain with ECT in recent years. No clinical studies have been conducted. According to a 2023 systematic review of 109 cases, (78%) of cases reported reduction in Many of the case reports did not include information on the degree of improvement or the length of the follow up period to determine if any improvements lasted. There was almost no mention of the risks and side effects of the procedure. The authors of the review recommend further study because they believe ECT is a viable option for treating chronic pain.

I believe the risks of electroconvulsive therapy are significant and outweigh any potential benefits, especially since there are many safer and more effective options for pain relief. This article will elaborate on the risks and offer a brief discussion of other options. 

What is an ECT session like?

 

 Before receiving ECT treatment, a patient is first injected with anesthesia to block pain and muscle relaxants to prevent broken bones.  A rubber mouth guard is placed into their mouth to keep them from breaking their teeth or biting their tongue.  Electrodes are attached to the patient’s scalp, and between 180 and 480 volts of electricity are delivered to their brain.  The result is a seizure that lasts between 30 and 60 seconds.  Most patients receive an average of between six and twelve treatments – one per day, three times a week. 

How does electroconvulsive therapy work? 

Although there are various theories on how ECT “works”, not even experts in the field understand exactly how it affects the brain.  According to Mental Health America (formerly the National Mental Health Association), a leading non-profit mental health organization, “It is not known how or why ECT works or what the electrically stimulated seizure does to the brain”.  The organization also says, “It is also unclear whether or not ECT is effective”. 

What are the risks of ECT?

 

While proponents highlight ECT's potential benefits, its critics point to a range of very significant risks. The most commonly reported side effects include:

• Memory Loss: Many patients report loss of memories, particularly around the time of the treatment, which can extend to periods well before and after the therapy.
• Cognitive Impairment: Difficulties with concentration, attention, and executive functions have been noted, which for some persist long after the treatment course has ended.
• Physical Side Effects: Beyond the immediate effects of anesthesia, patients have reported muscle aches, headaches, nausea and seizures, sometimes prolonged, post-treatment.
• Increased risk of suicide
• Death. The American Psychiatric Association has acknowledged that the ECT procedure itself results in death in about 1 in 10,000 patients, primarily from heart failure.  Others claim that the risk of death is much higher, and some believe that it could be as great as one in four among the very elderly.

 

True stories of Electroconvulsive Therapy side effects

 

The most well-known instance of harm associated with shock treatments is that of writer Ernest Hemingway.  After dealing with the effects of his ECT treatments for depression, he said, “what is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business?  It was brilliant cure, but we lost the patient.”. He blamed ECT for destroying his memory and leaving him unable to write.  He committed suicide in 1961. 

 Jerry Boswell, the executive director of Citizens Commission for Human Rights (CCHR) in Austin, Texas, reported that when he was in college in the 1970’s, he was tutored in math by another student whom he described as “quite a mathematical whiz”.  His tutor unexpectedly disappeared from campus for three months, and no one knew what had happened to him.  When he reappeared, he had lost his math skills along with a lot of his memory.  Boswell was shocked to discover that his tutor did not remember him at all.  As it turns out, his tutor had been arrested for smoking marijuana, a criminal offense at the time.  According to Boswell, “I don’t know how it all came about, but his parents had negotiated some type of deal to keep him out of jail.  He was committed to a psychiatric hospital in Dallas, and they gave him ECT therapy. Seeing what happened to his tutor is what led Boswell to his job at CCHR, a non-profit organization dedicated to investigating and exposing psychiatric violations of human rights.

Diana Loper, who eventually became an anti-ECT lobbyist in Texas, and worked with Boswell, has publicly recounted her experience. In 1978 after the birth of their son when she was 24 years old, she found herself suffering from feelings of sadness that were symptomatic of postpartum depression.  Her husband could not understand why she was feeling this way, so he took her to see a psychiatrist who recommended ECT.  Though she refused to consent to the ECT treatment, the doctor told her that he (with her husband’s consent) had made the decision that she would receive ECT and she was put into a hospital psychiatric ward against her will.  While there, she received 27 shock treatments in 29 days.   

Find a provider

When her treatment ended and her husband arrived with their son to pick her up, she had no memory of either of them - the memories never came back.  Her husband ended up divorcing her and taking their son and disappearing.  Loper moved in with her parents because she was unable to take care of herself.  She couldn’t even remember how to do simple tasks like tie her shoes.  She lost her short-term memory as well as most of the memories of her life before she had shock treatment.  She had to relearn how to do everything that she had formerly taken for granted – from driving a car to operating appliances.  Because she was only reading at about a second-grade level after her ECT, she also had to relearn how to read at an adult level.  Her short-term memory and her math and spelling abilities never returned.  “It took me about three years to really be able to function again,” she remembers.  In addition to problems with her memory, her shock treatments caused her to develop severe epilepsy.

 

There are Better Alternative Pain Treatments

 

Contrast ECT with another therapy that uses electricity to treat chronic pain, Calmare Scrambler Therapy. Using small electrodes judiciously placed in the region of the injury (but not directly on the pain site), the freestanding technology sends a mild “no pain” message to the brain through the electrodes.

This message overrides the brain’s pain message signal and corrects it, over a series of one treatment daily for an average of 10 days, to a ‘there’s no pain here” message. In many cases, pain is lessened for the patient as soon as the first scrambler therapy treatment. Regardless of how long they've had the condition, many patients are completely pain-free at the end of the 10 days of treatment. There have been clinical trials performed at several high-profile research facilities here in the United States, including at the Mayo Clinic and at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Positive results have been found with CRPS, Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, low back pain, post-herpetic neuralgia. There have also been many clinical reports of successful treatment of fibromyalgia.

Calmare Scrambler Therapy is not painful and has no known side effects.

 Find a Calmare Treatment Provider!

Cost of Treatment

 A typical cost of treatment for ECT is $2500 per treatment for a total cost of $25,000 for an average course of treatment. It is the most profitable psychiatric treatment.

A typical cost of Calmare Scrambler Therapy is $250 per session with a total cost of $2500 for an average treatment course of 10 sessions.

Insurance companies typically cover the cost of ECT, at least when it is used for depression, and refuse to pay for Calmare Scrambler Therapy.

Other Safe and Effective Alternative Pain Treatments

There are many other safe, effective natural treatments for chronic pain besides Calmare Scrambler Therapy which are being ignored by mainstream medicine. For a brief overview, see this article or check out the hundreds of other blogs on the Alternative Pain Treatment Directory. Pain patients don’t have to rely on risky therapies like ECT therapy to feel better.

Related Articles

The Functional Medicine Approach to Peripheral Neuropathies
NMES vs. TENS: Which Unit Is Best for Your Back Pain?
The Suppression of Alternative Medicine
Calmare Scrambler Therapy Is an Effective Therapy for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS)
Calmare Therapy for Neuropathic Pain Relief
The Best Treatment for Back Pain
Pain Reprocessing Therapy
Six Ways to Use Your Brain to Heal Your Pain
Neurofeedback Treatment of Chronic Pain