The suicide epidemic we face deeply saddens me, so I offer my experience to give others hope. It was like a switch had been flicked off. There I am, one day smiling happily with my then 6-year-old daughter on New Year’s Day 2015 at a playground, and the next memory I have was crying in my friend’s arms, still January, saying “I’m scared, something’s wrong with me.”
I’d battled depression before, the last time resulting from a series of suicides at work involving me as the first responder. While I had to take a leave from work, it was more rapidly responsive to a combination of medications and therapy. This time was different. Nothing was working.
The first time my doctor talked to me about ECT – electroconvulsive therapy – I dismissed it. I had too many images in my head of shock therapy as it used to be known in the movies: traumatized, lobotomized, broken patients like in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest." I didn’t stop to think the movie was 41 years old; I didn’t realize that today’s treatment no more resembles what happened to Jack Nicholson’s character than today’s computers resemble ones from the same era.
While I kept telling everyone closest to me that “I can’t think my way out of a box,” my anxiety remained Herculeanly strong. I imagined I would have to quit my job, lose my house and move in with family. At least I was rich in that regard; my family would take us in, while thousands of tragic souls sleeping on our streets were not so lucky. I’d seen so many of their stories unfold in my work over the last 16 years in Portland and Denver. But I wasn’t at all sure I could keep myself alive. I took leave from work to lay in bed with a bottle of benzodiazepines and a bottle of rum, contemplating the deadly mix, but I guess I was too scared to try it. I enrolled in an outpatient treatment program five afternoons a week, its only purpose as far as I was concerned was to get me out of bed, out of the house and away from the potential of suicide during those hours.
I can’t express in words how unbearable and exhausting simple things were; getting out of bed and fulfilling my responsibilities as a mother. The worst were the weekends when I had to find ways to keep my daughter occupied. My entire day revolved around getting to the end of it when I could go to bed and shut down my consciousness. That was my only peace.
After a year of this existence, I realized my daughter and I had suffered enough. Family and friends expressed their grave concerns and even my colleague shared, “I miss you,” one day when I spoke about my condition. What he meant was that the Rachel he knew to be driven and focused was gone, replaced by a vacuous stranger.
The doctor gave me the odds: 50 percent of ECT patients experience no relief, but I had reached my bottom and felt I couldn’t subject my daughter to my debilitating depression any longer. I had already lost my self-respect, my intelligence, my fight and my joy for life. My family and employer stood by in full support. My brother flew in for the first treatment, and one loving friend from afar jokingly texted me that morning, “Don’t forget me!” I texted back, “We’ll see.”
It worked. I noticed within the first month of treatments that I was improving and by the end of the second, my family, friends and colleagues noticed my return. I’ve been free of depression for over a year and a half! Now, the highlight of my day is getting out of bed in the morning, kissing my daughter and the thrill I get from my work each day. Last summer, my work included presenting at a Congressional Briefing, attending a White House presentation by the Surgeon General, and meeting with members of Congress. Over the past year, I have hosted a couple of great fundraisers (one for the Affordable Housing Bond and the other for a candidate for the Portland Public School Board) and my daughter’s birthday party.
My doctor tells me that if ECT works, the odds are that it will always work. You can’t develop a resistance to it the way you can with medications. My only regret is that I didn’t have someone like me post-ECT, on the other side of the deep, dark, terrifying depression to talk to me so that my daughter and I didn’t have to endure 12 months of misery before trying it.
ECT is not a first resort for treating depression and can’t help everybody. But if you or someone you know is suffering from depression, don’t be afraid of it. Educate yourself. Talk to your doctors; talk to someone who’s had it. And never give up. ECT saved my life and it could save you or someone you love.
Rachel Post is a licensed clinical social worker in Portland.