Yeah, there's no doubt about the depression, but I still wonder which of my thoughts are caused by that and which aren't.

And don't get me wrong, I am scared of ECT as well as meds. It's just that at least with ECT, the side-effects are pretty clearly defined and relatively predictable, and you know it affects only your brain. Plus, at least I know when the treatment is done and when I can transition to maintenance treatment, unlike with meds where there's no well-defined end and I may never succeed in getting out of the acute phase.

With meds there's about a hundred side effects that you might get, some of them serious. And they affect your whole body. I might get kidney damage, I might get diabetes, I might get high blood pressure, I might never be able to sleep without meds again, I might gain weight, I might get tachycardia, I might get permanent tardive dyskenesia, I might get seizures, I might get a deadly skin rash, and so on.

But many of those most damaging side-effects are long term, so Pdocs (and maybe some patients) don't worry about those side-effects as much as the effects from something like ECT, which are immediately visible. To me, that's just like sticking your head in the sand. In the end, the meds are no less damaging than ECT, and at least with ECT I know it's more likely to be effective than not, unlike meds which in many cases have well under 50% effectiveness. At least that's how I see it.