Immediately prior to the treatment, the patient is injected with a medication that prevents abnormal heart rhythms, then the patient is given an intravenous barbiturate which is used as the general anaesthetic, and then the blocking agents. Electrodes are attached to the patient's scalp either on one side of the brain or two - a switch is flipped for a few seconds, the convulsion itself lasts about 30 seconds, and several minutes later the patient wakes up disoriented and groggy, and often with no recollection of the events surrounding the treatment. Would-be patients may get the impression that the charge is conducted through the brain with far more surgical precision than in the past. Nevertheless, only a small proportion of this actually gets through the skull to the brain. Managed care providers apparently see this as a long-term benefit when compared to the costs of medication.
Some patients can also experience longer-term memory loss.
The psychiatric profession has reacted defensively to the parade of patients who have come forward with their stories, equating their narratives to Cuckoo's Nest scare tactics, but the truth is psychiatrists have downplayed this rather disturbing invasion of the brain's hard drive. Part of this can be attributed to the politics of ECT, where many of the same people who are against ECT are also against medications and psychiatry in general, including psychiatry's antichrist Peter Breggin and the Church of Scientology. Only recently has the American Psychiatric Association publicly owned up to the possibility of serious memory problems. The same Atlantic Monthly article also pointed out that the great pianist Vladimir Horowitz had ECT, which didn't affect his ability to memorize the billions of notes to perform Tchaikovsky and Chopin. It was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient.