Today patients are always put to sleep. Still the movie is not entirely a Hollywood fantasy. In the 1950s, before the proliferation of anti-depressant drugs, patients were often shocked without their consent. They were shocked for ulcers, psoriasis and even for homosexuality. And still today, people are forcibly shocked for depression, by court order.
Shock therapy is no onetime procedure.
It involves a series of shocks, from six to 16. Susan has undergone at least 14 shock treatments in the space of two months. Electroshock is as much art as science because how it works is still a mystery. All that's known is that a short jolt of electricity triggers a seizure that lasts less than a minute. For Susan, however, it's not a matter of how it works but that it works.