I suppose, just to be aware that no matter how many times you’re doing ECT, the people who come to it, may come to it with really strong pre-conceptions about you know, what it involves, or what it’s going to do, and they may well be, even if they’re not saying it, they may well be nervous about what’s going to happen and so I think anything that you can do to, to reassure people and just to talk, you know, the same as you would do trying to make anyone relaxed in any situation, to try and kind of talk to them, and just treat them as a person. I think, you know, part of it is that you feel, [sighs] you know the negative experience you have with psychiatry is when you feel that you’re kind of just being sort of controlled within a system, and the biggest difference to me that, theres not a lot that someone can do for you when you’re that ill, but one thing that can make even a really frightening experience a less frightening experience is just talking to someone as if they’re, you know, actually as if they are a human being, as if they’re a person.

I mean you know, not treating them as if they’re stupid and they’re not going to understand what’s going on, and equally, you know, not treating them as if they’re, you know, just to treat them as if they’re a regular person and even if the experiences which they’re having might be really strange experiences, just, they’re just a person whose having those strange experiences rather than them, you know, being defined by what’s going on in their head. And anything like that that you bring across to someone who’s going in for ECT or otherwise, you know, is a valuable, a valuable thing.

The success rates are a huge, and I would say, you know, even if you think it might be something you’ve considered, talk to people, ask about it, don’t write it off, don’t think you know, I’m not going to do this, because I heard something really bad about it. Theres a massive amount of negative press out there about ECT and it was used badly in the past. It was used in the wrong circumstances and in the wrong way, on people that it shouldn’t have been used on, but if it’s used in the correct way, under the correct circumstances, on people who have the type of condition that it could help, it can be incredible and it has for me, and I mean I definitely, I can say with my hand on my heart, I wouldn’t, I mean because theres only so many suicide attempts you can make before one actually, mine were getting closer and closer and you know, like I can say with my hand on my heart, I mean its 99% I wouldn’t be here today, I certainly wouldn’t be here today giving this interview. I wouldn’t be here today full stop you know, and my family’s life would be destroyed if it wasn’t, if it wasn’t for ECT. Yeah.

And after that, I mean, it took some time, it took some time to make a full recovery, because, you know, after the experiences of the previous year and I was, I was really in pieces and I, I, you know, took a while, over the course of the next few months I needed to get my sleep sorted out and I just needed to come to terms with the anxiety that whole, the whole episode had produced for me. And I had some cognitive behaviour which really helped me, like, get sort of relaxed and face kind of getting back to life again and just kind of get over what happened. And I also, it helped, I managed to come off the sleeping pills and get back to sleeping again, and you know, that just took a couple of months because I wasn’t, I wouldn’t say I was really ill then, I just, it was more like the after effects of just having the sort of the trauma of the whole year, and then following that I went back to university the next year and I went back and did my final year at university and it was, you know, it was tough going back, a lot of my friends had left by then and I was pretty shaken about what had happened, but my department were lovely and really supportive and I went back to university and I, and it went really well and I ended up, yeah, I ended up getting a First, which is what I’d really hoped for all along and staying in academia.

I will say, in later life, now knowing that ECT is the one thing that actually can work for me when I’m ill and also knowing that when I’m ill I do become paranoid and I will often get to the point where actually I don’t want to have treatment and I don’t want to be in hospital and I don’t want anyone to be looking after me. I’ve actually now written an advanced statement, which I signed last time I was in hospital to say that, you know, actually, you know, by signing this, no matter how well I seem, even if I say that I don’t want to carry on with the treatment, even if I argue that I don’t want to, you know, I accept that I want this to be done on me and if it has to be compulsorily, you know, even if I have to have a repeat of the same thing, I don’t mind.

I’ve actually kind of, I’ve almost sort of pretty much authorised that with an advanced statement, you know, which actually kind of came into play last time, because it did get to the point when I was in hospital when I was so ill that I suddenly became quite paranoid and I didn’t want to have the treatment and with my ability to act like theres nothing going on, I probably, you know, I would have been able to convince a Mental Health Tribunal that it wasn’t necessary for me to have the treatment. But because I’d signed this piece of paper, you know, I knew actually that there was no choice. I mean I kind of asked my doctor and he said, Yes, you know, what I will show them the piece of paper. So, and it worked, and in the end I said, Yes, I’ll have it. And I agreed, because I knew there was no choice. I knew if I didn’t agree, I was going to end up having it any way. And its, you know, that is better to kind of walk into the room willingly rather than be dragged in, but I do know that in my future, I may well get ill again at some point, and if I do, you know, I may well need it, need the treatment and I might decide that I don’t want the treatment, that it’s not the right thing and you know, it may happen that I do have literally, as happened to me before, be kind of you know, held down and it sort of, until I’m under the anaesthetic and I actually accept that.

And I’m pleased that, bizarrely people, I don’t think anyone who has never been in this position could understand it, but I’m pleased for my own sake and I’m mainly pleased for the sake of my family that the law has those powers to do that. I’m pleased that there is an element in the Mental Health Act that allows ECT to be carried out on people involuntarily, because I think actually for me, my life probably depends on that law being there, and I think if they eradicated that law, it would actually be a breach of my human rights, rather than the law itself being a breach, you know, if the law was eradicated.

I’d escaped from hospital and almost killed myself, and he really, you know, he was very threatening about the whole thing and I was very ill at that point, and quite paranoid, and I just, you know, I didn’t know what he was talking about. I mean he said, you know, ECT.

And he was like, you’re going to have it, you know, if you don’t sign the form. I remember him holding out the form, and saying you know, This is the form And I’m like, But I don’t want to have the treatment. Why would I sign the form? And he was like, Well, you know, what you’re going to sign it, or you will have it signed for you, and if you have it signed for you, you will be sectioned, and if you’re sectioned that will be it. You know, you’ll never be able to You know, it will go on your passport, you’re never going to be able to go and visit your brother in America anymore. You won’t be able to You know, these were kind of things and so it just, [laughs] I was really scared about the whole thing.

And I thought maybe if we combined the beginning of the treatment, when the treatments are closer together with kind of, with the withdrawal from the drug that I was on, then that might counter the beneficial effects, the ECT might counter for the negative effects of the drug and so we put together a plan.

I did a lot of research into it. It’s not a treatment when is widely used and so I, yeah, I did a lot of research. I contacted people in America. I contacted people over the UK to try and find people who were experts in the field and I was very lucky because I got put in touch with the, sort of, the leading UK expert into ECT and he, yeah, hes an amazing man, I mean, he lives up in Scotland and he gave me, he called me, and we, you know, he gave me some advice by email and stuff and then he actually called and sort of took a very brief case history and I told him what was going on, and he suggested how to do the maintenance ECT in terms of how many treatments and how And what he said to me was that, You need to do one a week for two weeks, then one every fortnight for two fortnights, one every three weeks for two treatments and then go to one every four or five weeks. One every month, but the key was, that he said to me, because I’d had such a rough few years and I was so sort of vulnerable in my system I needed to continue the treatment for quite a while to build up the strength.

But he also that because I’d had a long period in my life when I’d been symptom free, it, he didn’t necessarily think I would need to continue it for sort four or five years, you know, or continue it kind of forever. But you know, it’s possible, if I could get well enough, that I could have another period of remission. A long period of remission again and that’s a possibility, although he couldn’t guarantee it, but he said, you know, looking at my hospital it might be possible.

So, at that stage we thought, you know, this is the right thing to do, and I, you know, discussed it with my consultant and he thought it was a good idea. So we started it and I did it, I started it in February of 2011 and I, and it was, it was an amazing success. It was absolutely incredible.

Yeah, the first couple of months were really hard going, mainly I think because of the withdrawal effects from the other drug, but all of a sudden, once that was out my system, it started to get, it became like a virtuous circle, rather than a vicious circle. My having the drugs out of my system, I started to be able to, be able to sleep. I even came off the sleeping medication. After a few months I was able to sleep naturally for the first time in four or five years. You know, my appetite returned, my physical strength returned, and that contributed so much to my wellbeing. I went down to having the treatments every sort of four or five weeks, which I did for kind of 12 month period and really I just got, I just got better.

And I had been, you know, over a year of being in and out of hospital and very dangerously ill. And I gave the ECT a try and I had seven or eight, I had eight treatments ultimately, but I think after the seventh one I just woke up and the whole thing had lifted and it was quite incredible. I can’t, you know, I could never put it into words. It was as if I’d switched back on and I’d come back to life again, and the screen had kind of gone.

And after that, I mean, it took some time, it took some time to make a full recovery, because, you know, after the experiences of the previous year and I was, I was really in pieces and I, you know, took a while, over the course of the next few months I needed to get my sleep sorted out and I just needed to come to terms with the anxiety that whole, the whole episode had produced for me. And I had some cognitive behaviour which really helped me, like, get sort of relaxed and face kind of getting back to life again and just kind of get over what happened. And I also, it helped, I managed to come off the sleeping pills and get back to sleeping again, and you know, that just took a couple of months because I wasn’t, I wouldn’t say I was really ill then, I just, it was more like the after effects of just having the sort of the trauma of the whole, the whole year, and then following that I went back to university the next year and I went back and did my final year at university and it was, you know, it was tough going back, a lot of my friends had left by then and I was pretty shaken about what had happened, but my department were lovely and really supportive and I went back to university and I, and it went really well and I ended up, yeah, I ended up getting a First, which is what I’d really hoped for all along and staying in academia.

I knew I need to come off the drugs. I was still on one tiny dose of, of one antidepressant, but it wasn’t helping. It was actually having the opposite effect, because it was a stimulant and it was contributing towards me, towards me, my inability to sleep. And my feeling of being over energised. But the problem was, if ever I tried to come off it, coming off it, itself, withdrawal, would then trigger an episode. So I was sort of caught in a catch 22 situation.

I mean my family, sort of my family they’re really, I mean I guess because I had it such a long time ago now, and they knew stuff and so it’s kind of, they just, they don’t think anything, they’re quite, you know, they’re very rational my family, and they think, you know, this is an illness and this was the treatment that worked and like, yeah, like I say my Grandma had had it, and you know, my brother’s a psychiatrist who practised it, who’d actually done it himself and so it, for my immediate family it didn’t really, you know, they don’t think, they’re just grateful that it exists. You know, they think, if anything they think ECT is incredible. They are like pro ECT, you know, they’d carry around pro ECT banners if they could, you know, [laughs]. They are just thankful that the process exists.

My friends, my close friends, likewise I think, you know, they can see the difference that it makes and even if they’d never heard of ECT or even if they had heard of ECT and had you know, kind of strange ideas about it, having seen me going through it and the difference that it makes to me, they now, you know, they would go and recommend it to anyone that they heard was in a, and I think that’s generally. Everyone who knows me, if they hear of someone else who was in a similar situation, the first thing they would do would be say, You know, consider ECT. It’s incredible.

Other people? I mean I find it, I don’t know, I mean, I don’t really, although I’m doing this and as I say I’ve done the other things for MIND about kind of pro ECT sort of interview or whatever, but I don’t really tell people a lot. You know, I don’t, I’m not, I don’t hide it. If someone asks me directly but I don’t talk about it a lot. Generally I just don’t talk about the whole thing, but I think that people find it so hard to understand, you know, to understand mental illness in itself, that actually, for me, it’s easier not to talk to, unless it’s a very close friend who sort of, I just don’t talk about it, because peoples misconceptions and lack of understand is, you know, it just that in itself is, yes, I can’t sort of, I just find it hard to deal with really.

But I think that ECT’s a remarkably successfully treatment, has vast success rates on people who are in a really acute state and I just think it’s a huge shame that it has received such negative publicity and so many are so reluctant, even to suggest it as a treatment, when in fact it could help enormously and it achieves really rapid remission and it may have marginal side effects, but I can’t, you know, compared to the side effects of long term drug treatment even, its minimal.

So I said, Okay I’ll give it again. And they were really, you know, they were so good about it. The ECT team at the hospital I went to, they are wonderful and I can’t talk about them in, you know, highly enough, the way that they treated you, the humanity, the way they made you feel relaxed about the treatment. I mean they follow the guidelines, which are now set up ECT, about how to treat people who are going through the treatment in terms of, you know, preparing them, making sure that someones with them to feel comfortable, explaining the process. You know, they did all of that, and when they actually came to do the treatment, it was done with such kindness and humanity and dignity that it really changed my whole perspective of what had happened from the previous hospital which was the very polar opposite. And it was incredibly because all of a sudden after six or seven, the sixth or the seventh treatment, I just, I came to and it was gone. It was just gone. It was like this thing had lifted from my head and I was better. I was just better and I didn’t feel, you know, I could reconnect with the people around me and the world seemed real again and I didn’t want to kill myself anymore and it had all gone. It just went. It was like that, like a switch. Quite incredible.

What other sort of aspects of that bit helped it be a better experience?

Well I mean I think you know, a lot of it is down, so much of it is down to the people. So much of it is down to the people, but also things like, you know, having, I, you know, my husband hes, I mean not so much when I’ve been an inpatient but certainly with any of the outpatient treatments, he comes with me and hes like there, I mean it really helps to have and when he hasn’t been able to come, my Dad has come, or sometimes you know, my sister-in-law has come with me or even a friend, just to have someone, you know, to have someone kind of there and they sit with you in the waiting room and stuff and you kind of you know, you chat and they, they usually have, I mean they’ve been refurbishing the block actually, so weve kind of been doing it almost in a trolley in the middle of the corridor but you know, I’m kind of used to it, so it didn’t really bother me, but generally they try and, they’ve been doing it the new ECT block. They try and have nice surroundings, which actually it does, it does help, because, you know, as I say I’m kind of an old hand at it, so I don’t really feel nervous before hand, but it is nice to kind of come into a nice room, and it’s just, I think the most important thing is that you know, they, they make it really clear what’s going to happen, they explain every step of the way, they always, when you go in, everybody introduces themselves, and says, You know, I’m so and so, this is what I’m going to be doing.

So you don’t look round the room and think why is that person standing there, you know, they ask any questions, any worries, you know, any have you had all the checks? And everything’s very, you know, it’s all, it’s all very relaxed and I mean the anaesthetist is lovely, and they always sort of say, oh you know, Think about something nice and it’s going to kind of And it’s just sort of those, it’s just being really sort of human about it, explaining the whole process, you know, and especially if its someones kind of first time, or they’re not used to it, but the fact that they kind of, they’ll go out of their way to almost to over explain and say, Are you sure, you know, are there any questions? And you know, this is what I’m doing, and this is what I’m doing. And I think, but I think all of those things help it make it, help make it a much less, you know, frightening procedure. You know, and when you come round, it’s very nice, you know, when you come round someone always brings you a cup of tea and because you haven’t eaten therell be a biscuit sort of, and they you know, those sort of touches, actually make a difference.

It was actually, it was a private hospital. We had insurance and he was not he didn’t do it in a very good way at all. He was very angry, he was angry that I’d, you know, I think it looked bad on him that I’d almost killed myself when I was supposed to be under his care. He was very angry and he essentially threatened me and said, You know, you have to have this treatment or, you know, were going to section you and you’ll have to have it anyway. And I was quite overwhelmed by the whole thing. I didn’t know what it was, and it sounded, I was quite paranoid by that stage anyway, and so I was quite terrified and, but I signed the form because it really made it sound as if I didn’t have any choice. I mean some of the things he said were weren’t even true about the consequences, but he, so I signed the form and I had it. I had my first treatment.

And I don’t really remember what happened. I mean I just had one treatment and then for some reason he stopped. He just, I don’t know what happened. I was well enough at some point just to leave the hospital, but I wasn’t well, I wasn’t better. And I was still really, really ill and then we met someone else. My parents went to the funeral of a family friend. There was a friend there a friend there who was a psychiatrist and they told him about me and he said, You know, it really sounds like she needs ECT. You know, It really sounds like shes got severe clinical depression and the drugs are not working. She needs to come off the drugs and have ECT.

And I ended up going into hospital actually under his care and he was a very, you know, he was a very nice man and he made it, he didn’t make it sound frightening at all. He just, you know, explained the whole process. Explained that I have a choice in the matter, that you know, that he felt that it would work and it was definitely worth giving it a shot. And I did.

I was so, I mean I was so vulnerable because I’d been ill for such a long period of time, and hadn’t really slept for you know, three or four years and I was, my immune system was damaged by all the side effects of the drugs and things. So I couldn’t get better completely and I didn’t have a maintenance strategy. So you know, I came out of hospital. I was better from the acute symptoms, but you know, it, for me a lot of the time the thing that precipitates an episode will be physical, will be physical illness or something like that. And because my immune system has really crashed, I got ill. I kept getting ill in the winter months. I’d get flu or something and then it would all happen again.

So for a couple of, a couple of winters, I had these episodes following flu or a viral infection and I would end up back in hospital. I’d have the ECT treatment and it, once again it worked like magic, each time. It was great. But we couldn’t find a way of stopping myself from relapsing and it was getting progressively more dangerous, because, you know, theres only so many times you have a failed suicide attempt before one, you know, you work out what’s going, and one came very, very close. Very close.

And it hasn’t, it’s sort of, you know, its eight, nine years, I’ve returned to, you know, returned to myself and I feel like I’m, you know, I feel like me and my family, we, rather than lurching from crisis to crisis, I feel like were having a proper life and I can be a good Mum to my daughter and you know, we have we have stability and I mean I still work really hard at maintaining my health, you know, the drugs don’t help me, so I have to have my own strategy, which is mainly exercise and I now use self-hypnosis rather than meditation. And I’m very careful not to try and overdo things. But you know, having said that, I’ve gone back to work.

But it just got worse, everything got worse and I pretty soon, I started to think, it just came into my head, the idea of killing myself and then it wouldn’t go, and it just, I couldn’t stop thinking about it all the time. It just dominated every moment of my thinking.

And I knew that, I didn’t even really feel like I had control over myself. And I don’t even think I knew why exactly I wanted to do it. I just felt that everything was so unreal.

The next one, I got really, I’d come off the drugs by then because the side effects, they weren’t helping, the side effects were, it was unliveable and I became, I became very I became very manic. It was once again, it was one of these mixed episodes but you know, manic in a really, really bad way. I was incredibly high out in terms of you know, being up all night and having vast amounts of energy and being mental productive but I was also at the same time mentally suicidal, and I was desperately trying to stop myself killing myself. I mean everything in my head was telling me to do it, but I knew because of the effect it would have on my family that I, you know, I was fighting so hard as I had always done against these kind of voices in my head that were telling me to do it. But I also knew it was just a matter of time because it was so intense, I really believed that I was going to die and I believed that I was going kill myself and I believed it was inevitable and that there was nothing that could stop this, you know, this kind of power from subsiding because up to them we hadn’t to the we hadn’t found anything and I did in the end, I made another attempt and once again, I was, fortunately unsuccessful and I tried throwing myself off a bridge, but I was caught again. So, and you know, I went back to hospital and we didn’t know what to do really, we were all stuck and in the end my consultant said to me, Look, you know, will you try ECT again because nothing else is working?

The next one, I got really, I’d come off the drugs by then because the side effects, they weren’t helping, the side effects were, it was unliveable and I became, I became very I became very manic. It was once again, it was one of these mixed episodes but you know, manic in a really, really bad way. I was incredibly high out in terms of you know, being up all night and having vast amounts of energy and being mental productive but I was also at the same time mentally suicidal, and I was desperately trying to stop myself killing myself. I mean everything in my head was telling me to do it, but I knew because of the effect it would have on my family that I, you know, I was fighting so hard as I had always done against these kind of voices in my head that were telling me to do it. But I also knew it was just a matter of time because it was so intense, I really believed that I was going to die and I believed that I was going kill myself and I believed it was inevitable and that there was nothing that could stop this, you know, this kind of power from subsiding because up to them we hadn’t to the we hadn’t found anything and I did in the end, I, I made another attempt and once again, I was, fortunately unsuccessful and I tried throwing myself off a bridge, but I was caught again. So, and you know, I went back to hospital and, and we didn’t know what to do really, we were all stuck and in the end my consultant said to me, Look, you know, will you try ECT again because nothing else is working?

I talked to my family, and brother at that time was a psychiatrist. Hes a lot older than me and he was already a psychiatrist and I told him what was happening. I said, I can’t understand what’s going on. And then he said to me, You know, he said, I think you might have depression and I was actually really shocked, because I didn’t, I didn’t really know anything about it. But just it sounded, actually then, you know, it sounded quite frightening and I thought what’s that?’ I knew it was an illness but I didn’t really know. And he urged me to go and see a doctor. And at that point my Mum actually told me that my Grandma had had very severe depression. That shed had, in those days, what they called a couple of breakdowns. I knew nothing about it. I mean I don’t think anyone knew. Shed kept it secret and it was back in the kind of 50s, or 60s, or 40s, and they didn’t tell anyone. Only the immediate family knew. So I didn’t know anything that my Grandma had a history, but apparently she did and I went to the doctor and I told him what was happening to me and he asked me about family history and I said, Well yes apparently my Grandma. So yes, they thought that’s what it was, depression. And we tried, you know, he put me on some antidepressants, and. But it didn’t work, nothing worked and he tried various ones.

But it just got worse, everything got worse and I pretty soon, I started to think, it just came into my head, the idea of killing myself and then it wouldn’t go, and it just, I couldn’t stop thinking about it all the time. It just dominated every moment of my thinking

And yes, in hospital they couldn’t really work out what was going on because I didn’t show any of it on the surface at all. And, and there was nothing wrong in my life. I had a really lovely family, you know, I was, I was, I had everything really. I had a great supportive family. I had a lovely boyfriend. You know, done well academically, was at the university I wanted to go to, was doing really well in my studies, had loads of friends, I just had everything really going for me. And I’d always had a really happy go lucky personality as well. I just was, and even when I was depressed, I smiled. They called it smiling depression.

I now know that I have bipolar disorder and actually it was a mixed state when you experience depression and elation at the same time, but at the time, no one, it’s one of the things which is never, it takes years before people diagnose that because it’s something that really confuses people, because you feel full of energy and you maybe seem on the surface quite happy and almost elated but you’re suicidally depressed at the same time.

I came back from holiday and I was told than one of my best friends had been killed in a car crash and she, it’s something really strange happened, I just, when I heard the news I just went into shock, which anyone would have done but I didn’t really recover from the shock. It was as if I can only describe it as if, like a screen had come down between me and the world and nothing, it was, it was disproportionate in every way to, as a reaction to what had happened, because it was though it was a terrible tragedy and she was a close friend I, what happened was not, was out of proportion to the event. It was everything became quite unreal and I didn’t really know what was going on.

I just knew that I didn’t feel right and I went back to university. It was the beginning of the second term and very soon it became evident to me that I wasn’t myself, everything seemed quite, everything seemed quite unreal, and I. I mean I lost my appetite and I couldn’t sleep. I was waking up very, you know, if I went to sleep I would wake up very early in the morning and it, everything, my head was, felt like it was rushing inside. I couldn’t stop thinking, not about anything in particular, just thinking and I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t, and everything around me seemed progressively more unreal. I’d be in a room and it would just seem like everything was spinning around, but my behaviour was normal, like it didn’t manifest itself in my outward behaviour, but I knew I didn’t feel right and I started to feel really bad, and I just felt really, I didn’t really know what it was. It didn’t, I can’t really say that I even felt depressed. I didn’t necessarily feel low in the way that you would think. I just felt really strange and my head was spinning and it felt awful. It felt, it felt like, you know, I was in a different world from everyone else and I felt a huge sense of panic and isolation and just detachment, and I couldn’t feel anything anymore. I didn’t feel sad or, I just didn’t feel anything. Just felt scared, about what was going on and I, eventually I went to the doctor.