Brain Damage from ECT and the breakdown of loving and meaningful connections within the family Unit - Andy Luff

I'm Andy Luff and this is my first attempt at a blog post.  People may look upon it as either a good or bad effort. This doesn't bother me really. What I am writing about is the truth about what happened to me  and my family after I had ECT in 2015. Here goes:-

I had 4 individual ECTs in the spring of 2015. Psychiatry had diagnosed me with Bipolar 2 when the problems that I was having were due to sensory overload from my Asperger's. I kept telling them this.  I was polydrugged with antidepressants and antipsychotics for 2 years before they gave me ECT, then polydrugged for another 3 years afterwards. The psychiatrists really had no idea what they were doing, using such words as "we must get the cocktail right" and "sometimes it gets worse before it gets better" when I was explaining to them about my brain injury after the ECT that I had been given.

Through the denial of brain injury from ECT by psychiatry, I was pretty much abandoned emotionally by my own family. This sadly is not uncommon for those who are given a brain injury from it.

My family believed psychiatry that my 'mental illness' was getting worse. They diagnosed me with Bipolar 2 within minutes of my first consultation and incredibly, in my case, that my "Asperger's was getting out of control and worsening." Family believe this often about 'mental illness' when they are of the school of thought that all doctors actually know what they are talking about.  We are left abandoned by our own families often as a result of this.

Often we are humiliated by our own families who tell us that we "should make more of an effort."  Let me say this: living, or I should really say existing (just about) after a brain injury from ECT, we can find even the simplest tasks difficult and even beyond us, like making a cup of tea or brushing our teeth. We just cannot remember how to do these things any more.

I felt so isolated from my own family.  Even when I looked at old photographs of them they appeared as strangers to me.  I did not even recognise myself in these photos.

I went down to visit my Dad on 3rd June last year.  We made up. Bridges that were broken were mended for he finally believed and accepted that I had received a brain injury from the ECT that I had in 2015. We talked lovingly like we used to.  We had not done so for many years after my brain injury. We hugged one another which was wonderful and he told me how proud he was of me. That was the last time I saw him alive for he died in December last year. We spoke regularly on the phone right up until the week that he passed away, exchanging kind words. I will miss these phone calls.

As for the rest of my family, they are still swayed by psychiatry that I do not have a brain injury from ECT. They do not contact me any more.  I have learned to accept this, hard as it is, and the fact that they may never contact me again.  I just get on with my life nowadays and concentrate on this.

Brain damage from ECT and the breakdown of the family connections as a loving unit is so cruel.

This blog was liberating to write.