ECT, Newsnight and anal retention

I went on Newsnight this week, to talk about ECT.

ECT stands for electro-convulsive therapy. It is a treatment for depression. A very successful and straightforward treatment, in my case. 

I have it about once a year, when my depression comes back. When the illness pours iced water through my veins, so it's hard to move my limbs; whispers insidiously in my ear that I'm useless and that the joke's on me for speaking so openly about it when I'm well, until I'm reduced to tears; and sits cross-legged on my chest, like a baddie from Luther, stifling me with its weight and water-boarding me with fear.

You can watch it here, although this link will combust in a couple of days.

I also went on Radio 5 live the next day, to talk about it with some of the people interviewed for the Newsnight report. Two of these were doctors - Dr Ian Reid, a psychiatrist who uses ECT and has made some interesting discoveries about how it actually works, and Dr John Read, a psychologist who thinks that ECT is a placebo with harmful side-effects.

I'm not a scientist, or a doctor, so I didn't want to get into the research debate. I'm just someone who's had a lot of ECT, and looked into it as much as a journalist can, when I wrote my piece for the Guardian last year.

(NB this seems like a good time to reveal that I wrote about it for the Telegraph too, a few years before, under my middle name. I'm not ashamed of having it at all, but at the time I was worried that it would be the only thing that ever came up when you googled me, and didn't want to be defined by it. I don't worry about that any more.)

But when it comes to the science, here's where I stand. I would rather be guided by someone who actually works with ECT patients, administers it regularly and carefully monitors the side-effects by testing short-term memory and brain function for months afterwards. This is what Dr Reid does.

By scanning the brains of severely depressed people before and after treatment, you can see the difference that ECT has made on them. I've always known that a depressed brain looks different, but I've never seen the pictures. They showed them on Newsnight and I found that fascinating.

Dr Reid's 'hyperconnectivity' theory is that ECT 'turns down' (picture a volume knob here) the connections between the bits of the brain that govern mood and thinking. Maybe it's a bit like having one bit of your brain behave like a toddler having a tantrum, which happens to us all, right? Some people's brains can cope with that, mentally shut the door or take a deep breath and plough on. A depressed person's brain is far too sensitive to that trigger, their nerves become completely frayed very quickly, and the bit controlling their mood ends up sobbing on the kitchen floor.

Dr Read does not actually work with ECT patients. His paper is a literature review - he has carefully selected studies done by other people, and drawn his own conclusions from them. Let me say that again: Dr Read does not work with people who have ECT.

His argument that the treatment becomes 'addictive' also doesn't stand up, in my case. The pattern of my illness hasn't changed. I have rapid-cycling, unipolar, severe depression. For ten years, I would have an episode approximately once a year. It would take several months to burn itself out, despite whatever pills or therapy I was trying at that time. 

Then I tried ECT. They put me to sleep, I woke up, and I was better. 

However, I haven't had to have it increasingly regularly in the six years since then. It's not a quick fix that brings me back begging for more after a few weeks. The frequency of the episodes is unchanged. It still comes back about once a year. It just means I get back to normal much more quickly. 

I'd like a lot more to be done to reduce the stigma surrounding ECT, which is often based on myths. I thought I'd come across them all before, but Newsnight brought me face to face with an amusing reaction that I'd never encountered. In the green room beforehand, I was introduced to the guests for another item, on the economy. I stood up and shook their hands. As I was doing so, the producer explained to one person that I was someone who had electric shock therapy. She looked appalled, and snatched her hand back quickly. 

I know it's unfair to judge on a kneejerk reaction, but what was going through her mind at that moment? Did she think I was hooked up to the mains, or still carrying around a voltage?!

Would a scan of her brain at that precise instant tell us whether she reacted like that because she quickly accessed a memory, or misheard, or because an emotion she was feeling manifested itself as a physical response? 

Anyway, a scan of my brain at the moment would show that I am perfectly fine, mental health-wise, at the moment. I have no hyperconnectivity to the tantrumming brain toddler, but I do have one in real life who has a new reason for some challenging behaviour.

Logie is potty training at the moment. Yep, just when you thought this was a serious blog post about an important issue, I go and spoil it with this. I still have ringing in my ears someone I heard on Woman's Hour ages ago, talking about how and why she went back to work after having a baby, and I simply can't get this fragment of what she said out of my head: "blah blah blah...work-life balance...how to have it all...men never get asked if they miss their kids...but in the end, I just thought that either I went back to work or I became one of those mummys who stayed at home and wrote a blog about poo".

This makes me think 'f*** you' and 'oh god, I agree, that's what I've become' in equal measures. But I'm going to plough on. (And for what it's worth, I adore Woman's Hour, it's my lifeline, and it's my great ambition to go on it to talk about ECT.)

He's been great on the wee front. I'm very proud of him. But poo has been more challenging. He has become anally retentive, in the truest sense of the word.

We've been through the mill in the last few weeks: constipation, diarrhoea, panic, tears, disapproval from nursery (thanks for that), dramatic false alarms, dramatic genuine alarms, sore botties and tummies. We go through a rather trying dance of the seven veils whenever a code brown is imminent, which can take a whole afternoon to reach its denouement.

Things are improving gradually, but it's a good reminder that you can't get too comfortable when raising small children - whenever you think you've cracked it, it's time to do something new. A few weeks ago it felt like we were starting to come out of the tunnel, thanks to Felix finally sleeping through and a new sun and stars sleep-training clock for Logie. But now I'm weaning one and potty training the other, and life seems busier than ever.

Though it's not without its sweet moments too. Logie is very keen on coming to the loo with me these days. He praises me, with a big smile and a slightly insulting look of surprise on his face - "Well done mumma!" - when I've finished, and passes me the tiniest wisp of loo paper. "Thanks!" I reply, enthusiastically. "You're welcome," he intones graciously. And my body, and my brain, become suffused with happiness.