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It's no panacea, of course. Electroshock's effects are short term, lasting weeks or months before depression can descend again. At $2,500 a treatment, it's also expensive, though insurance usually covers it. Antishock activists say it's just a cash cow for hospitals and that the response rates cited by the Surgeon General are inflated. In 1996, Lawrence of ect.org surveyed 41 former electroshock patients and found that 70% said the treatment had no effect on their depression. Joseph Rogers, executive director of the National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse, says 3 out of 4 of the electroshock patients he speaks with had negative experiences: coercion by psychiatrists, confusion, memory loss. Rogers and Lawrence don't want the treatment banned, but they believe few would undergo it if they knew all the risks beforehand.
It's hard to know what steps people will take when despair rules. Novelist William Styron has long battled depression; his 1990 memoir about it, Darkness Visible, inspired Hartmann and millions of others. Last summer Styron underwent electroshock for the first time. He had asked several prominent psychiatrists about the option, and they agreed it could help. It didn't, though he says he didn't suffer any negative side effects. "Anyone who would ban it is ridiculously off base," he says.
A ban seems unlikely--the psychiatric establishment uses its clout to quash the idea wherever it can--but more states could require more complete and open records on who gets electroshock. "The problem is it's a roll of the dice," says Brian Coopper, senior director of consumer advocacy for the National Mental Health Association. "Electroconvulsive therapy can be a quick fix, but you can't tell who's going to come out of it with part of his life missing."