Yeah, you're right that when a Pdoc doesn't want patients to have a say about their own treatment, it's time to run away. For me, being involved in my own treatment is one of my most important coping mechanisms. The problem is that with ECT, the waiting lists are so incredibly long that just "trying out" a new hospital can easily take six months. Meanwhile I see my life ticking away and my career going down the drain because I can't work properly as long as this episode is going on.

I have a good relationship with my regular treatment team, that includes my therapist, my regular Pdoc and the Pdoc from my crisis team. Both those Pdocs support me going for ECT, in fact they've both given me referrals for it. What makes it so frustrating is that they're not the ones who have the final say as to whether or not I get treated, because the ECT is handled by external doctors. I have to wait for months and months just to get a chance to talk to the ECT doctors, and then I have one short window during which I can convince them that I'm "depressed enough" (i.e. I have to fit their stereotype of what a depressed person should look like). If I fail to convince them, then it's over and I have to restart the whole process elsewhere. That's just completely unfair because I'm not someone who shows their emotions on the outside, especially to people I don't know, so Pdocs who only see me once can very easily get a wrong impression of me. And that is exactly what happened at the last hospital. Right now I'm just going crazy because I feel sure it's going to happen again and then I don't know what the hell I'm going to do.