As a child, I spent most of my summer breaks with my grandparents in Daisy, Arkansas. They owned and tended to a large farm there. I can remember seeing them both work so hard. But they enjoyed every minute of the modest and fulfilling life they had created in the southwest corner of rural Arkansas.
My grandfather, always busy bailing hay, feeding the cattle, or plowing fields, still took us fishing or swimming every day at the river. My grandmother was equally loving and attentive. She taught me how to sew and cook. I can still remember sitting at her sewing table watching her quilt and learning how to thread a needle. My days there were filled with visiting, exploring their farm, and immeasurable love. Their house will always feel like a second home to me.
Despite those picturesque summer memories, I can also remember the warnings. For example, we were warned not to bring up certain people or events that would upset my grandmother, and not to act too disruptive, as this could make her nervous. I was also warned at an early age that my grandmother could lose her temper at a moment’s notice. I remember thinking, “How can my grandmother, who has always been so loving, instill so much fear in those who love her?”
In time, I gained a clearer understanding of the situation. When my mother was four years old, my grandmother suffered a nervous breakdown caused by the stresses of tending to her dying mother, managing a twenty-acre farm, and raising four small children. Her doctor diagnosed her with manic depression. This is now commonly known as “bipolar disorder.” The doctor prescribed electroconvulsive therapy as her only treatment option.
Upon her return from the hospital, my grandmother was in complete disarray. She didn’t even recognize the smiling faces of her four children who stood at the door eagerly awaiting her return. The invasive and under-researched shock therapy had reduced her to a shell of her former self. Over time, her memory gradually returned. From that moment on, her children strove to keep her calm in an effort to avoid another breakdown.
Electroconvulsive therapy is commonly known as “electroshock therapy” or “ECT.” It’s history started in 1938 at the Clinic for Nervous and Mental Disorders in Rome, Italy. Two doctors, Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, invented the procedure. Their goal was to use electricity to induce convulsions in psychiatric patients considered too mentally ill for psychoanalysis to prove effective. Only a few other treatment options at the time existed for those with severe depression or other psychiatric illnesses like schizophrenia.
These other treatment options were all problematic. Insulin Coma Therapy was a treatment that included coma-inducing levels of insulin. Metrazol Convulsive Therapy involved injections of the drug pentylenetetrazol, a stimulant. This caused seizures in large amounts. Some doctors went so far as to surgically lobotomize the patients. All of these therapies have since been replaced with ECT since it has proven less damaging and barbaric. ECT actually mimics Metrazol Convulsive Therapy. Instead of large or possibly lethal amounts of drugs, electrical currents provoke the seizures.
Initial experiments of ECT began when Cerletti and Bini started preforming tests on canines. Unfortunately, about half of the dogs experimented on died of cardiac arrest due to an incorrect placement of the electrodes used. However, Bini soon discovered that when the two electrodes were placed on each side of the dog’s craniums, the dogs survived but suffered epileptic fits. The first human testing of ECT took place in April of 1938. Today, doctors use electroconvulsive therapy to treat patients with clinical depression and severe bipolar disorder who have failed to respond to medication. Most medications now commonly used to treat bipolar disorder, such as Lithium, were not available at the time of my grandmother’s diagnosis. Unfortunately, we will never know whether or not she would have responded well to medication.
Specialists were still depating the side effects and benefits of electroconvulsive therapy in 1965, the year my grandmother received her treatment for bipolar disorder. In fact, psychiatrists and doctors still debate ECT’s long-term effects on patients. One of the major and lasting effects is memory loss. This explains why my grandmother didn’t recognize her own children when she first arrived back from the hospital. Other side effects include confusion, headaches, muscle spasms combined with stiffness, and disorientation, all heightened by the amount of electricity used and the number of treatments. During the timeframe my grandmother received her treatment, ECT was stronger and more frequently used than it is today.
Reports from patients who have received ECT vary. Andy Behrman, author of the autobiographical book Electroboy, equates the experience to drinking “a frozen margarita too quickly,” and notes that afterwards, he felt “elated.” On the other hand, registered nurse Barbara Cody, who claims to have lost fifteen to twenty years of memories due to electroconvulsive therapy, calls the treatment “a rape of the soul.” Ernest Hemingway, who committed suicide shortly after receiving ECT in 1961, summed up his opinion on the treatment by saying, “It was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient. . . .”
Early on, the doctors kept patients awake for the entire ECT process. Now, they anesthetize patients. Medical specialists have made ECT less traumatic for the patients over time. Nevertheless, controversy still surrounds this therapy and it’s actual benefits. Granted, ECT can be effective for severe cases of depression and mental diseases. However, no one should administer ECT to an overworked housewife. Doctors should try other treatments such as psychological therapies or anti-depressants first. Electroconvulsive therapy should be a last-resort treatment plan.
My grandmother’s erratic behavior and electroconvulsive therapy treatment had an immense effect on my mother, aunt, and uncles. My mom tells me stories about how my grandmother would throw tantrums in stores and completely overreact over the slightest mistake or misunderstanding. I remember one story in particular. My mother had been talking innocently and excitedly about her upcoming birthday party. She had mentioned to my grandmother that she just knew she was going to get the Barbie doll she had been eying. My mother didn’t get her Barbie or her party. My grandmother thought my mom had been sneaking around collecting information from her classmates about her party and presents. She cancelled my mother’s party and returned her gifts. Mom still cries when she tells me about that day.
My Aunt, the oldest of the kids, still has a very strained relationship with my grandmother. I can only imagine the memories she has of growing up older than the other children. She was more aware of the chaos and depression. I think she bore most of the brunt of the yelling and punishments. She ended up marrying and moving out of the house before she was sixteen. She has suffered with addiction and depression most of her life and has yet to forgive my grandmother. It breaks my heart to see my aunt still meek and skittish around her own mother.
My uncles rarely talk about what happened, and they, too, moved away at early ages. They even moved to different states. After all, they were both responsible for helping with the farm. Moving away probably came as a welcome distraction. They were both close to my grandfather. The relationship they had with their father relieved some of the sadness and frustration they had with their mother.
When my grandmother returned home from her electroconvulsive therapy treatment, no one offered additional support to her or my family. No one provided a case manager to check on her progress. Accordingly, no one ever monitored how she adjusted back into her day-to-day life as a wife and mother. My overworked grandfather, essentially a single parent struggling to care for his family, provided her only source of support. But he did it, and he never treated her like a burden.
During the 1960s, a stigma surrounded mental illness. My grandmother wouldn’t share her experience with her friends and relatives in fear of what they would think or say. However, she was fortunate enough to have a husband who, in his own words, “towed the line” for his family. Without his unconditional love, support and never-ending friendship, my grandmother could have felt isolated. In fact, she probably would have had more than just one nervous breakdown. She might have even been institutionalized like hundreds of other less fortunate and abandoned patients. There’s a message here for researchers, medical institutions, and caregivers everywhere.
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Shasta Bedard is a writer from the Colorado Springs area.
