Psychiatric illnesses remain among the most mysterious maladies that doctors encounter. In the emergency department we see only the ‘snap-shot’ of what is often a chronic illness with a roller-coaster course of ups-and-downs and pervasive psychosocial consequences. We rarely get to fully understand the big picture.
This enthralling TED talk by inspiring medical historian and surgeon Sherwin Nuland gives a detailed account of one man’s illness. He starts by recounting aspects of the remarkable history of electroshock therapy. He then tells, for the first time, of his own nearly hopeless battle with severe and refractory depression. Ultimately, with a prefrontal lobotomy looming on the horizon, he was rescued by one of the most maligned and feared of all treatment options: electroconvulsive therapy.
Nuland’s tale of his rise from the ashes is a valuable lesson in hope, humanity and recovery for both doctors and patients alike.
“One of the most remarkable and beneficial reforms of the nineteenth century has been in the attitude of the profession and the public to the subject of insanity, and the gradual formation of a body of men in the profession who labour to find out the cause and means of relief of this most distressing of all human maladies.”
- William Osler, from Medicine in the Nineteenth Century, in Aequanimitas, 224.
PDF 
About Chris Nickson
