>>13982986If you think of the brain as a sort of computer, it's like people with certain mental illnesses have a bad combination of software and hardware that can occasionally result in a negative loop. The best way of ending the loop is to 'restart' the system, which is what the shocks end up doing.
My wife has bipolar and her last manic episode proved to be almost entirely drug resistant to the point of surprising many of her treating doctors on the unit (a wide variety of antipsychotics were tried, to the point of giving her regular massive doses of olanzapine that would, in normal circumstances, knock out men the size of rugby players. She's 5'7 and weighed only 55kg at the time). The medication was helping blunt the worst aspects of her psychosis but it wasn't stopping the mania. Lithium wasn't tried due to previous poor physical reactions to it and valproate did absolutely nothing.
We finally managed to get a court order to zap her and it worked wonders, brought her back down to reality in just the first 2 or 3 sessions until she got to a point where she was able to think rationally and clearly again and could cooperate with beginning a new medication regimen.
