... Isabel Got Herself Electrocuted...

Prejudice, rooted largely in insecurity, still exists. Driving some acquaintances recently, I passed a well-known hospital. "Oh, look," said one of them. "That's where Isabel got herself electrocuted." And he moved his left index finger around his ear in a sign for crazy. All my activist impulses rising towards the surface, I asked what exactly happened to Isabel and found, as I'd anticipated, that she had received ECT at the hospital in question. "She must have had a hard time," I said, attempting to defend the poor girl without being too earnest. "Think how shocking having shock must be." He burst out laughingly. "I nearly gave myself electroshock treatment the other day when I was trying to fix my wife's hair dryer," he said. I am a great believer of sense of humour and I was not really offended, but I did try -- and fail -- to imagine our going past a hospital at which Isabel might have had chemotherapy and making similar jokes. (p. 366)

ECT is almost certainly the treatment that is least specific to a particular neurotransmitter system, but it is believed by many clinicians to be the fastest and most effective of current treatments. (p. 397)

... but depression is an emotion that exists in all people, fluctuating in and out of control; depression the illness is an excess of something common, not the introduction of something exotic. It is different from one person to the next. What makes people depressed? You might as well ask what makes people content. (p. 398)

崔洋一の「血と骨」が上映中なので行ってみてもいいと思っている。