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Sherwin Nuland’s Story of Recovery & Electroconvulsive Therapy

Written by john

Sherwin Nuland is the best-selling author of How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter Sherwin Nulands Story of Recovery & Electroconvulsive Therapy and many other books. As he says in this video, he had never before disclosed the experience behind the spiritual dimensions of his writing until presenting this talk at the TED Conference in 2001. Everyone’s reaction will differ, of course, but for me this is one of the most moving stories of recovery I’ve ever heard.

I want to offer a caution or two. In the first part of the video, Nuland sketches a quick history of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and the many earlier treatments that stimulated convulsions as a way of shocking people out of mental illness. ECT elicits strong reactions from many, including me. He doesn’t disclose up front where he’s going with that overview of the technology, but at 7:14 minutes in, he starts the story that puts ECT into the setting of his own devastating depression. If you prefer, you can jump to that point in the video, though it’s well worth it to hear about ECT from a point of view you may not agree with.

Given the short-attention span the internet encourages, this is a longer video than most you see on blogs. It’s worth 22 minutes of your time. But the length also means it takes a while to download, and it’s much faster if you click on the You Tube logo, at the lower right corner, and watch it there.

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Related posts:

  1. The Validation Video
  2. Reflections in Mind: Sherwin Nuland’s Recovery from Depression
  3. Anger Therapy
  4. Surviving Work, Surviving Depression
  5. Work, Identity and Recovery – 1

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 at 3:16 pm and is filed under Experience with Treatments, Recovery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 Comments to “Sherwin Nuland’s Story of Recovery & Electroconvulsive Therapy”

1. Posted by Evan, January 10th, 2010 at 3:04 am

Thanks John, interesting stuff on convulsives in the early part. And a quite extraordinary personal story.

Thanks for this.

2. Posted by Karen, January 10th, 2010 at 8:06 am

What a great story for a Sunday morning.

3. Posted by Bill White, January 16th, 2010 at 4:06 pm

Thank you John. What a powerfully inspiring video.

4. Posted by john, January 16th, 2010 at 10:13 pm

Evan, Karen, Bill -

Thanks for coming by. I’m glad it hits home for you too.

John

5. Posted by Carla, January 17th, 2010 at 5:47 pm

Hi John~ What a wonderful blog you’ve created. I really look forward to visiting often and reading what you have to share. I really enjoyed this video- very hope”filling” to hear another story of recovery. We all have our own unique journey, heading in the same direction. Thanks.

6. Posted by john, January 19th, 2010 at 12:38 pm

Thank you, Carla -

I hope we can have a good dialogue here in the future.

John

7. Posted by WillSpirit, January 19th, 2010 at 5:25 pm

Thanks for pointing to that video on ECT. My mother received some thirty treatments. While she was being treated, she gradually faded away. She lost her memory, and acted stunned and withdrawn. Then she killed herself anyway. Since I was only six, it left me with a visceral hatred for the whole concept of shock treatments. But it obviously helps sometimes. If only there were a way to know who it will make better, and who it will make worse.

8. Posted by john, January 20th, 2010 at 3:52 pm

Hi, Will -

What a horror story – it shows that they don’t really know why ECT ever helps. The few people I know who have been through it have not been helped. It was dreadful to see the effect on one friend whose speech slowed because he had to think carefully about each word to get through a sentence. Not to mention memory. He got over those “side effects” but was still depressed. If it works, people are converts. But the other stories are not so well known.

Thanks for telling about that experience here.

John

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