What I have read from other people's experiences is true in terms of hassle, stress, and level of pain: a trip to the dentist for a filling is worse than the experience of getting an ECT treatment! I'm having it done at a very reputable hospital in the Southeast, and they seem to be very good at what they do. The only slightly painful part is getting the IV inserted, but that's nothing once you get used to it. After that, the process generally goes like this: they hook you up to the EEG monitor, put a blood pressure cuff on your arm and on your ankle, have you breathe in oxygen through a mask, then administer the anesthesia via the IV. You quickly start feeling yourself go to sleep. Then you wake up in the recovery room. You are anesthetized through the whole procedure. Most people's waking reactions are related to the anesthesia and not the ECT, and that varies by person. I have generally woken up pretty calm but a bit disoriented, which is to be expected. After 30 minutes or so in recovery, they let you go home. They also give you some juice and cookies, since you've been fasting. The very first treatment left me with some upper body muscle aches and a bad headache and a little bit of nausea, but I haven't had any of that since the first treatment, just a slight headache. Pre-treatment, they administer some anti-nausea meds and a pain reliever via the IV, so that took care of that.

In terms of mental health effects, I actually started feeling a lighter mood with the first treatment. Since then, my ruminating has lessened quite a bit, and I actually feel like doing stuff I haven't felt like doing in a while. My anxiety has also not been as bad. I should note that I wasn't in the deepest depressive pit I've ever been in when I started, but I definitely was having some major trouble functioning at work and was having some periods of deep despair every day.

Let me know if you have any other questions about the treatment. It's way less scary than I thought, and this is coming from a total scaredy cat!