My roommates and I are having an argument about electroshock therapy after watching Jack in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. What actually happens when someone gets zapped through the brain? Jack convulses for a number of seconds after he gets zapped, but one of my roommates contends that would not actually happen and there would be no convulsions after the initial shock (i.e., after the electrodes are removed). Can you give us the Dope?
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This is the most interesting thing you can think of to ask about electroshock? Whether it makes the patient twitch? Come on, what you really want to know is: (1) What is electroshock supposed to accomplish, anyway? and (2) You mean they’re still doing it? (Answer: You’d better believe it.) But don’t worry, we’ll delve into the question of twitching, too.
The idea behind “shock treatment,” whether chemical or electrical, was to trigger a grand mal epileptic seizure. For ECT the patient was placed on a gurney and electrodes were attached to the temples or other points on the skull. In the early days a stiff jolt of house current was applied without further ado, and the patient went into convulsions lasting a minute or so. The spasms were sometimes violent, and in about 1 percent of cases the patient suffered a broken bone or dislocation. (Broken bones were more common in metrazol therapy, causing many doctors to favor ECT.) In later years doctors began using anesthetics to knock the patient out plus a muscle relaxant to eliminate injuries. So to answer your question, patients twitched big-time in the old days but twitch relatively little now.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration by Slug Signorino.
