Shock treatment…
The idea of not taking meds is so amazing to me because schizophrenia itself is a chemical imbalance. You would think the logical thing to do is to attempt to correct the imbalance.
The hardest part is figuring out the imbalance. There is no way to measure the exact amount of dopamine in some areas of the brain. So we have no choice but to experiment with the brains of our loved ones.- sometimes turning them into different people entirely.
Also, the drugs have systemic effects throughout the body. There are dopamine receptors everywhere that do different things. It can be a real s*** show. 
Hey, that paints a negative picture about ECT. It is an approved therauptic intervention for many diagnoses (major depression, epilepsy) It is not like what you see in To Kill a Mockingbird. It is a highly regulated, and considered an invasive procedure (so a lot of care and thought is placed into it’s standard of practice).
It is completely voluntary, there must be informed consent by the patient/caregiver.
There is NO PAIN: An IV of analgesia and sedation is administered during every session.
There is continuous monitoring of the heart, brain activity, blood pressure, oxygen saturation in the blood, and heart rate.
The nurses and doctor should be reassuring the patient every step of the way. It can be very scary for the patient to think about. If your care professionals are not doing their job, then find somebody else. ECT can be found elsewhere.
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GSSP’s daughter just went through ECT. He has been kind enough to share with us his daughter’s experiences. If you look around you can listen to her results from her treatments. Its very positive.
Check out the thread Interview with my daughter…
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@hpirozzoli Approximately 60% of the people with scz have the symptom “anosognosia”. It means lack of insight, or simpler, they believe that the delusions, hallucinations and voices are real. The voices they hear actually register as brain waves - even though they aren’t real.
They don’t take meds because they don’t believe there is anything wrong with them. For years people would accuse such people as being “in denial”. The reality is that their brain is preventing them from understanding they are sick. We all believe what we see, what we hear, are real. The 40% who don’t have the symptom anosognosia are able realize they are ill. Still, they have to deal with their delusions, hallucinations and voices all the same.
Interestingly enough, 40% of people with bipolar suffer from anosognosia also.
Some people like to simply say “they are too sick to realize they are sick”.
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I will, thank you for your insight!
I am not denying this. My dad has a history of non-compliance and self-medication.
I am trying to convey how hard it is to treat because we do not have an exact science for the mind.
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How often we all wished we lived in a world of logic - lol- we seem to end up living with people who have an illness that parks logic and rational thinking at the door when scz it enters.
The man who gave the Peer talk at our FtF said - you have a problem with a tiny, tiny piece of your brain and the doctors want to shoot your entire brain full of drugs.
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That pic is very current of the procedure used today… It is 100% accurate…
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Not true, visit an ECT ward. It is not what you think… LOL, the only way to get into one of these wards is when you are in line to get the shock… Poor old dribbling with no one to sign… fact… I looked in the door (I shit you not, once into the behavioral science ward, in the back you access the ECT ward, yea I opened the door and looked in at a BIG black dude guarding the door, one big room full of the old) a shit load of poor, old, dangerous, dribbling f***s that have been abandoned and no family… better off dead if it were me
Not True… When you wake up, you are in great pain, just like surgery… From head to toe, it goes away after a few hours but the jaw pain last a couple days…
LOL, it is not as easy to find a facility or a doc that will do it… took us 4 years to get it done…
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GSSP–sounds awful. Does she think that it was worth it?
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YES, She is ready to go again, once a month for life, just like invega shot…
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I didn’t realize that the ECT had to be repeated. Great news that she has benefited from the treatments 
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Yep, I can already tell it is wearing off… She had it done on 27 November and today is 14 Dec…
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I am sorry your daughter has experienced ECT in this way. I am ignorant of your experience.
When my dad had ECT it was not like that. I also have learned how to perform it and comfort patients while they are going through it as a nurse. Maybe the facilities in my state do it differently/have very different policies.
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Thank you again to Ashley for sharing her experience.
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I’m sorry for your loss. Thanks for sharing your story.
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I wish that was possible here in South Florida but here there are practically no programs at all unless your rich. However in Canada they had Orthomolecular.org
Orthomolecular.org. (Not com but org) has been giving info and working with the California schizophrenia foundation healing schizophrenics for over twenty five years. This org is out of Canada. Every year they have a symposium, this year April in Japan. Not here in the USA where the pharmaceutical companies make billions on the medicines but Canada. I want to do that here in the USA. The millions of homeless Schozohrenic s need their own communities to begin with and who better to build them then the rich greedy pharmaceutical companies. If a homeless individual would prefer to sleep on a park bench at least have that park bench be in a safe community of theirs. Anyone want to help me get the homeless safe communities and heal schizophrenia instead of putting it in remission for a season with poisonous medicines???
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Before the rich greedy Pharma companies came along, people with sz were chained to the walls in asylums. I don’t want my son confined to any sz “community” - sounds like a leper colony to me. I don’t want apartheid for people with SMI. I want him living in regular society with medical and social and familial support like the normal citizen he is.
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For people for whom the medications work, they can be lifesavers.
I agree that every single rich corporation in capitalist America is greedy, does not care about human life, and constantly exploits every one of us whenever they can.
However, I am using all of my consumer “goods” every single day to do the things I need to do. Sometimes people need psych meds; sometimes they don’t.
Of the 350,000 people in the US who are homeless and have a serious mental illness, there is a strong chance that 75% of them could be helped significantly by medical treatment, including housing, wraparound social services, good food, restful sleep, and effective medication.
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