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The phase “electroconvulsive therapy” might make you feel a little bit uneasy. It brings to mind the days when medical science was a bit less scientific than it is today and patients were subjected to painful electric shocks to keep them compliant. It makes sense that electroconvulsive wouldn’t be the kind of treatment you might want to consider based on our pop culture image of it.

But ECT has really gotten a bad rap in the popular imagination. And that’s caused us to overlook what might be one of the most effective treatments for a symptom that affects a lot of people with fibromyalgia: depression.

So let’s look at electroconvulsive therapy with fresh eyes. What is it? Is it safe? And is it worth trying as a treatment for depression in people with fibromyalgia?

What Is Electroconvulsive Therapy?

Electroconvulsive therapy is a procedure that sends electricity into your brain, inducing a seizure. This might sound frightening or even barbaric, but there’s a very good reason that doctors do it. And that’s because it works.

The practice dates back to the early days of psychotherapy when doctors noticed that in patients who had depression and epilepsy, they often felt better after having a seizure. So the doctors began to look for a way to artificially induce seizures with electricity. But they didn’t have the training or resources to use it effectively. And they didn’t quite understand why it actually worked.

Even today, we don’t know how electroconvulsive therapy treats depression, just that it does. Doctors think it has something to do with the way it changes the flow of blood in the brain and releases neurotransmitter chemicals.

Is It Safe?

In the old days, electroconvulsive therapy was often administered by people lacking medical training. Essentially, the patient was strapped down and shocked with a voltage determined more or less by trial and error. As a result, the procedure often resulted in broken bones or other serious injuries.

But these days the procedure is done very differently. The patient is sedated first, which prevents them from even thrashing around too much and in addition, it means that you’ll have no memory of actually being shocked. The dose of electricity administered is also carefully chosen to make sure it’s safe.

The patient wakes up after the procedure with minimal side effects. Usually, the most significant effects are a temporary short term memory loss. Though, sometimes the memory loss effects can last for several weeks or months. There can also be physical side effects like sore muscles or jaws.

Is It Effective?

Most studies that have been done on the effectiveness of electroconvulsive therapy have concluded that it is one of the most effective treatments for drug resistant depression. It’s been shown to be more effective than pills in treating depression in the short term.

Often, doctors recommend electroconvulsive therapy in situations where someone’s life is directly threatened by their depression, like if they are at significant risk of suicide or refuse to eat and drink. In these cases, the ability of electroconvulsive therapy to offer immediate relief of symptoms is invaluable.

Other people use ECT as more of a maintenance treatment, getting regular treatments to keep their depression in check. But there’s a bit more skepticism about whether ECT is effective as a long-term treatment.

But for people with fibromyalgia, suicide is a serious risk. In fact, it’s such a serious risk that people with fibromyalgia have a shorter lifespan on average, even though fibromyalgia isn’t a fatal condition. So, a treatment that can deal with serious depression quickly can be a literal life-saver. Most cases of suicide are committed impulsively, and study after study has shown that if you can prevent someone who is suicidal from carrying it out, they will usually not try again.

And in addition, there’s some evidence that ECT can help with some of the pain associated with fibromyalgia. But at the moment, that hasn’t been proven conclusively. Some people who have had the treatment swear by it and there are scientific studies that have concluded it really isn’t an effective way to treat fibromyalgia pain. So, tough to say if it’s really effective or not. We won’t know until we have more information on the subject.

However, if you’re one of the many people with fibromyalgia who is also struggling with depression, looking into electroconvulsive therapy might be a good idea. Particularly if you’ve found that none of the other drugs help. What’s important is that you find something that works. And remember you’re not alone.

So, tell us: Have you ever had electroconvulsive therapy? How did it go? Would you recommend it to others? Let us know in the comments.