[Anneinside]

I saw my psychiatrist yesterday and we decided that I would stop the maintenance ECT after the next two scheduled treatments (once every 4 weeks) so my last one will be early Oct and I will see her for another appointment the second week of Nov. She said if I run into trouble we can schedule more treatments although if it has been too long, I might have to have a series of 3 treatments in a week and go back to weaning down on treatments.

I have been having ECT since the end of May a year ago so I have had more than year of stability. I am a bit worried about stopping treatments.

[blueoctober]

Anneinside; I don't have any experience with ECT treatments other than what I read. What is the normal course of treatments?

[Anneinside]

A normal course of treatment varies greatly. Once you have finished the initial series (usually 3 times a week for 6 to 9 sessions) you either stop treatments or go on maintenance and start weaning down - once a week, every two weeks, etc. I know there are some people out there who have monthly ECT for the rest of their lives (Carrie Fischer for one). The longer you go between treatments, the less effective it becomes.

I have had two other series of treatments. The first time we didn't do any maintenance treatments. The second time, we did maintenance but never got below every two weeks because I became to resistant to the seizures (my pdoc will only do 1 or 2 applications in one treatment b/c more than that can cause serious memory loss) as I didn't seize after 2 applications. I think I was on ECT treatments for around 6 months. This time resistance to seizure hasn't happened.

So back to your question... I don't know what a normal treatment course looks like.

[blueoctober]

Originally Posted by Anneinside

So back to your question... I don't know what a normal treatment course looks like.

That makes sense because everyone is different. I think it's natural to feel concerned. I have cherished my stability (was going on to about 5 weeks until today), so I can relate to not wanting to change anything to keep it going. Perhaps though you could look at it that the ECT did it's job and that stability will continue.