Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy

Kitty's dramatic first-person account of how ECT keeps at bay her illness is half the story of Shock. The other half, by award-winning medical reporter Larry Tye, is a captivating look at the science behind ECT and its dramatic yet subterranean comeback. Far from the grisly process that inspired films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and fostered a stigma that still persists, today's ECT is fast, safe, and presents a better prospect for relieving severe depression than even the best antidepressants or the sagest psychotherapist. And it is not just depression: ECT has an enviable success rate for a series of other debilitating mental conditions.

Shock looks at ECT's full picture, analyzing the treatment's risks along with its benefits. The book considers memory loss and other complications that have kept electroconvulsive therapy under a cloud of controversy, and it explores refinements that can minimize that loss if not defuse the controversy. ECT, it turns out, is neither a panacea nor a scourge, but a serious option for treating life-threatening ailments. Through Kitty Dukakis's moving account, and interviews with more than 100 other ECT patients, Shock separates scare from promise, real complications from lurid headlines. In the process it offers practical guidance to prospective patients and their families on whether ECT can help them battle depression, bipolar disorder, and other disabling mental diseases.

Kitty Dukakis has battled debilitating depression for more than twenty years. Coupled with drug and alcohol addictions that both hid and fueled her suffering, Kitty's despair was overwhelming. She tried every medication and treatment available; none worked for long. It wasn't until she tried electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, that she could reclaim her life. Kitty's dramatic first-person account of how ECT keeps her illness at bay is half the story of Shock. The other half, by award-winning medical reporter Larry Tye, is an engrossing look at the science behind ECT and its dramatic yet subterranean comeback. This book presents a full picture of ECT, analyzing the treatment's risks along with its benefits. ECT, it turns out, is neither a panacea nor a scourge but a serious option for treating life-threatening and disabling mental diseases, like depression, bipolar disorder, and others. Through Kitty Dukakis's moving narrative, and interviews with more than one hundred other ECT patients, Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy separates scare from promise, real complications from lurid headlines. In the process Shock offers practical guidance to prospective patients and their families, boldly addressing the controversy surrounding ECT and awakening millions to its capacity to heal.

Kitty Dukakis, the wife of former Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, is a founding member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an advocate for programs to battle homelessness and promote refugee rights, and an overseer at the New England Conservatory of Music. She revealed her ongoing struggle to overcome depression and her accompanying addictions to alcohol and diet pills in her 1990 memoir, Now You Know.

Larry Tye is an award-winning journalist who spent fifteen years with the The Boston Globe, where his primary beat was medicine. He has taught journalism at Boston University, Northeastern, Tufts, and Harvard, and now runs a Boston-based fellowship program for medical journalists. Tye is also the author of The Father of Spin, Home Lands, and Rising from the Rails.