The Shocking Truth, Part I, II, III, IV

Written by Juli Lawrence

Thanks for the memories, Fox TV

BY LIZ SPIKOL
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It is not my habit to sit at home on Saturday night and watch the Fox 10 O'clock News. It is my habit to sit at home on Saturday night, but watching Fox doesn't generally enter into it. One night, though, my tendency toward the raw side of the TV dial got the better of me.

It was a strange twist of fate, I guess--one of those moments some would say was guided by a Higher Power but that I say was simply guided by desperation in the newsroom. The dirty, hidden secret Fox unscraped from beneath the news desk was this: Shock treatments are still performed in the United States and a new study says their benefit is even shorter-term than previously believed.

The coincidence was that I had spent much of the day before reading that study, talking to people about it and even being interviewed for an AP wire report about it. Even at home on a Saturday night, I couldn't escape that study. And I was reminded of it again this week, when 60 Minutes II did a similar story documenting the shock experience.

I had shock treatments for depression in 1996, which I suppose seems like a long time ago. One negative side effect has been that the passage of time does not compute for me the way it does for others. I couldn't tell you a thing about what I did two weeks ago, so it's as if two weeks ago never happened. If you go through years like that, the years easily disappear.

The benefits were short-term--about three months. Exactly one year later, I was back in the psych ward once again. If it surprises you that I had shock treatments, it shouldn't--between 100,000 and 200,000 people will have them this year, and that's just an estimate.

Unfortunately, there are no reliable statistics on the administration of shock treatments because, unlike most medical practices, reporting is not federally required. Just this year, Vermont became the first state to mandate record-keeping about shock therapy. And the machines used to perform shock treatments have been grandfathered out of regulation, so they can be as old as a Chevy in Cuba.

Fox News didn't say much about regulation, but they did something few media outlets had done before this week: They showed someone receiving shock treatments.

In most people's minds, the image of shock is of Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest . That's no longer accurate. As the doctors will tell you, with the IV muscle relaxant, the most that happens to the body when the electric shock induces a grand mal epileptic seizure is a slight curl of the toes.

The woman on Fox, who was a patient of Dr. Harold Sackheim, the author of the new study everyone's in a lather about, was pretty, with dark brown hair, and looked to be in her 40s. As Sackheim is a great proponent of shock therapy, and a financial beneficiary (hence the controversy surrounding his research), he was likely more than happy to provide Fox with an exemplar of how well the therapy can work.

But if you're at the point in your mental illness where you need shock treatments, you are truly in extremis. Is this an appropriate time for a doctor to ask his patient to appear on television?

I'm not surprised by Sackheim because, as I'll relate later, I think he lacks integrity. Nor do I blame Fox, because I imagine Sackheim (the supposed expert) told them she was fit as a fiddle for an interview.

But she wasn't, really. One friend who saw the broadcast said, "She looks like she's on Pluto."

There she sat, her hair still wet from the gel they use for the electrodes. She had a strange half smile on her face and her eyes were looking beyond the camera. She spoke of feeling like this might actually be the answer for her. But her voice was light and airy and she gave the impression of being less than her physical being would imply. I felt sorry for her.

When I had shock treatments, I was just as hopeful. I wonder if she will be as crushingly disappointed when she discovers how short-term her relief will be. Will she, like me, think it darkly comic that though shock treatments are most often given to people who are suicidal, the majority of those who end up killing themselves have already had shock treatments?

I did all the right things the following Monday--called the bioethicist, talked to the activists, did the research on the newest research. I don't think the information on this study is being disseminated properly, and I'll do my best to remedy that. But for now, I can't help thinking of that woman and the newscast of her shock treatments.

I was expecting the curl of her toes. But I had no idea the face contorts like that.

I understand now why I had a huge mouthpiece between my teeth. They told me it was just a precaution in case something went wrong. But the muscles in the face tense pretty violently.

So now I have another memory I didn't have, courtesy of Fox News on a Saturday night. Who says it's a bore to stay home? PW