Fruit Heights woman credits electro-conclusive therapy with relieving depression | News, Sports, Jobs

Shandra Mutchie has suffered from mental illness for over a decade, but after undergoing an electrical stimulation procedure, she said life doesn’t seem so bleak anymore.

“I saw changes immediately,” said the 28-year-old Fruit Heights resident. “It was like waking up in Oz where you see color again.”

Mutchie is being treated with electrotherapy at the Ogden Regional Medical Center. The treatment, formerly known as electroshock, has been refined and is much safer than in the past, said Dr Trent Suggs, director of psychiatry at the hospital. Patients with severe major depression, bipolar disorder, and those who resist drug therapy are eligible.

The procedure briefly stimulates the brain with small electrical currents, causing a short seizure while the person is under general anesthesia, Suggs said. The patient is also given a paralyzing agent so that the body does not actually experience the seizure, but rather the seizure occurs in the brain.

“There is a very specific machine that delivers a very precise amount of electrical current that induces the neural crisis in the patient’s brain,” Suggs said. “This machine can be made up of different energy levels, so the minimum amount of energy is needed to cause the crisis.”

Research has shown that the procedure increases the levels of catecholamines in the brain, which are the building blocks of all neurotransmitters that work in the brain, such as serotonin, norepinephrine, epinephrine and dopamine, Suggs said. These chemicals play a major role in mental illness.

Side effects are minimal and can include headaches, short-term memory loss, and sometimes body aches after the first two treatments.

“The only real side effects I have had are short-term memory loss and memory recall, but they keep coming back,” Mutchie said. “The morning after I had the first procedure, I woke up and wanted to get out of bed and do things. I wanted to be productive again and I didn’t want to kill myself.

Mutchie said she has struggled with mental illness since high school, when she began to suffer from anxiety and insomnia. By the time she got to college, depression had set in and she felt hopeless and struggling to get out of bed. Her doctor diagnosed her with bipolar disorder, but the medications she was taking were not helping her.

“I was taking a lot of bipolar medication and it went on for years and years. It wasn’t helping at all, ”she said. “After my marriage and my new insurance, I had to find a new doctor. I actually saw a medical assistant at the University of Utah and he told me he didn’t think I was bipolar so we had to start over.

After diagnostic tests, Mutchie was told she was definitely not bipolar. Instead, she was told she was on the autism spectrum and that’s where the sources of her anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, paranoia, and hyperfixation came from.

“It put my whole life in perspective and I knew it was chemical and not just in my head,” she said.

But even with the correct diagnosis, therapy, and medication, Mutchie still wasn’t feeling well. She ended up in the hospital twice with severe depression. It was then that she was told about electro-conclusive therapy.

“They told me at Ogden Regional that I had treatment-resistant depression and they wanted to try ECT on me. They said I would be their first patient. I was ready to try anything at this point, ”she said.

Mutchie saw such remarkable changes that she continued with therapy.

Suggs said the first round of therapy consists of three treatments per week for a month to reduce symptoms of depression and hopefully move towards remission from depression. Thereafter, the patient gradually switches to weekly, then bi-weekly and then monthly therapy until a state of equilibrium is reached.

“The goal of maintenance is to extend these treatments to a maximum duration between treatments, but not to allow the symptoms of depression to return,” Suggs said. “ECT certainly doesn’t have to be a lifelong procedure. Typically, after a few months of maintenance, the patient can stop, continue medications and outpatient therapy, and see if maintenance can be dispensed with.

Suggs said research has shown that some patients may never need another treatment in their lifetime, while others may need periodic treatments. Some patients may relapse and have to restart the series.

“Remission rates vary with age, condition being treated, and previous drug failures,” Suggs said, “However, generally speaking, some studies have indicated that remission from depression may be as high as 50%. % for people receiving ECT. “

Mutchie said she was happy to have agreed to the procedure.

“It was amazing for me. It lessened my margin for error with suicidal ideation and I was able to stay busy. I don’t go from zero to 100 anymore, ”she said. “The treatment gave me some color in my world and the patience to keep trying. I no longer feel like life would be better if I were out of the equation.

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