Shock therapies: benefits and risks

The label shock therapies encompasses different therapies that are very different from each other. What they have in common, like the name announces, is that they produce a strong impact. We are talking about a stimulus that must be capable of inducing a change in the person exposed to it.

Apparently, it was the ancient Greeks who first experimented with shock therapies. It is known that they applied different types of therapies to those people who had a high state of agitation. There are references that tell us that anxiety states, for example, were treated by inducing “drowning.” From there the questionable principle was established that a strong emotional experience is capable of erasing another previous problematic one.

Shock therapies themselves come from psychiatry. First, insulin shock and cardiazol therapies were instituted. It was the neurophysiologist Manfred J. Sakel who postulated that overdose of these substances caused improvements in psychiatric patients, especially those diagnosed with schizophrenia. We were in the 30s.

Later, electroshocks were introduced, a highly controversial type of treatment, but which, as striking as it may seem to us, is still used today. However, The mechanisms by which they are currently carried out are less invasive and more sophisticated. In fact, as we will see below, they are effective in the treatment of chronic depression that does not respond to ordinary treatments.

Some history about shock therapies

It is not easy to evaluate the relevance and effectiveness of shock therapies. It is clear that when a person undergoes an experience that borders on traumatic obviously it has to change. The question is whether this change really solves the problem you want to correct or if, if it does, this change is lasting.

There are several controversial aspects in the history of shock therapies.. They began to be used formally to treat mental illnesses in the 16th century. The data that supports its effectiveness is not very reliable, since this information was never systematized or treated in a strictly scientific manner.

Insulin shock therapy

Manfred J. Sakel, a Polish-Austrian neurophysiologist and psychiatrist, developed a way to calm psychotic patients in 1933: through an overdose of insulin. This caused them to go into a coma, but he later revived them by administering a solution through a nasogastric route. The result, according to specialists of the time, was hopeful.

However, only a few years later this type of therapy ended up being put aside due to clear evidence: more than 80% of people died. Ladislaus von Meduna, a Hungarian doctor, decided to design another type of strategy: he combined insulin with cardiazol . Mortality rates were not as high, however. The seizures suffered by the patients were so extreme that the vast majority ended up with injuries and serious bills.

Electroconvulsive therapy

Later, Ugo Cerletti, an Italian neurologist, made a curious observation. He detected that The pigs were given electricity to make them more docile before being taken to the slaughterhouse.. There he had the idea that a similar practice could be applied to humans. Insulin and cardiazol were no longer necessary.

Thus, and in this dark context, The controversial electroconvulsive therapy was born, first introduced in 1938.

Benefits and risks of shock therapies

There are documented cases in which these shock therapies caused, in the not too distant past, permanent damage or cardio-respiratory arrests.. In other words, they can lead to death. There are also references of people who have been left in a vegetative state after these procedures.

Now, as psychotropic drugs advanced in effectiveness, this type of approach lost strength until it was largely abandoned. However, it should be noted that there is one exception. To this day, electroshock continues to be used in another way, through other mechanisms and to treat a series of very specific conditions.

Electroconvulsive therapy in the treatment of depression

In studies such as the one published in the journal “Psychiatry” In 2006, the effectiveness of this type of therapy in the treatment of deep depression is discussed..

There are a good number of people in the world who claim to have benefited from these procedures. Likewise, from the Bellvitge University Hospital in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, in Catalonia, they have also demonstrated its usefulness in patients with this more resistant type of depression.

Likewise, the application of this type of therapy is safe and effective (always following current anesthesia protocols).

Shock therapies and psychology

However, There is a form of shock therapies that are much more harmless. They are used by psychologists mainly to treat phobias. What it is about in this case is exposing the patient, directly, to her own fears. He is pressured to do it, but at the same time he is accompanied.

Those who have been treated with this type of therapy report that they experience true agony before exposing themselves to the fear that torments them.

However, when they succeed and do not escape, the opposite occurs. They are filled with well-being and great self-confidence. Generally, if we talk about shock therapy – there is also progressive exposure – it is only necessary to do it once for the phobia to disappear.

As in everything human, in this case too the last word cannot be said. In psychology there is nothing that can be considered absolute truth. Every person is a world.

What is beneficial for someone, could be disastrous for another person. So neither shock therapies nor other types of treatments should be decided without a prior in-depth evaluation of the case to be treated.

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