Published 30 December 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2998
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2998

Practice

A Patient’s Journey

Electroconvulsive therapy

Matthew Webber, carer1

1 Newcastle under Lyme

Correspondence to: C Thompson, Specialist Registrar in Liaison Psychiatry, Harplands Hospital, Hilton Road, Stoke on Trent ST4 6TH cathmjthompson@hotmail.com

A carer describes the experiences of depression that led his wife to have electroconvulsive therapy and the effect of this treatment on the whole family

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

When my wife, Ana, suffered a depressive episode in 2001 after the birth of our daughter, we took it seriously but at first we weren’t excessively worried. Ana was no stranger to depression, having been diagnosed with it in 1990. The illness had always responded to medication, and we were both confident it would again. But something in the equation had changed. Drug after drug was tried. We tried to identify what in our lives might be dragging her down, but we couldn’t find anything. Our relationship was great, the children were doing well at school, money wasn’t a problem—we should have both been very happy. I watched as Ana, one of the most incredibly active people I’d ever met, shut down by degrees. We stopped going out for walks, shopping, and even just chatting to the neighbours. The situation worsened rapidly until Ana was admitted to hospital in March . . . [Full text of this article]


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