NOT the “shock treatment” from old
movies
Posted onTuesday, November
27, 2018 10:00 am Posted in Health, Inside Veterans
Health by Claudie Benjamin 743 views
Army
Vietnam Veteran Donald Weiss was not always prone to depression. In fact,
there were years when he loved his life. (He is pictured above (right) with
VA’s Dr. Justin Piershalski.)
His
voice picks up when he recalls the 20 or so years he was in and out of
acting. His sense of humor is revealed when speaking about his role in a
TV commercial. He and three other actors played the part of admen for a
car competitor who was frustrated when their vehicle couldn’t make it up an
Arizona peak. “I had one line,” Weiss says.
Also
dressed as an Army sergeant and wearing an apron, he once was in an ad for a
spaghetti sauce.
A
Baruch College graduate, Weiss was drafted into the Army at age 21. Based in
Pleiku, Vietnam, he served as a personnel management specialist. “It was
OK. I was in danger but nothing really happened to me.”
“New experience” helps him feel better.
After
an honorable discharge, Weiss worked in personnel management and then as a
welfare investigator. Living in the West Village, he went to acting
school. “I was bored and needed something and I saw an ad in the Village
Voice.”
He
developed a career acting in commercials and summer theater over the next two
decades. He was also an acting teacher at HB Studio. A particularly
rewarding time of his career was when he played David Letterman’s roommate Bob
in a long-running series of TV skits.
In the
1990s, Weiss was living in California, feeling very isolated, and fell into a
deep depression. He returned to New York and was hospitalized several
times over the next 15 years.
Weiss
says the support offered by his cousin Brian Lawrence has been critical to his
survival. “I’d be nowhere without him.” In 2014, Brian’s mother was
concerned about a very disturbing phone call from Weiss telling her he thought
he would be “departed” soon.
A good candidate for Electro Convulsive Therapy
Brian,
who had been an advocate for his own father who suffered from mental illness,
visited Weiss and saw an immediate intervention was needed. Weiss was
hospitalized for two months. But seeing no improvement in his cousin,
Brian says he came up with the idea of Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT) for his
cousin because he remembered his uncle had been treated with ECT with good
results.
As a
patient for whom other treatments did not seem to have success, Weiss was
considered to be a good candidate for ECT. He was apprehensive but open
to taking a chance. “It was a new experience,” he says. After a few
treatments, he says he started to feel better. He also takes a lot of
medication “for everything.”
The
first treatment in 2015 did have good results but he relapsed into depression which
was compounded by cancer and Parkinson’s diagnosis that followed in the next
few years.
Since
his second treatment, Weiss has felt upbeat enough to take walks and has found
a new and helpful interest in spirituality.
“I’ve
become an observant Jew,” he says. He regularly attends services
locally and occasionally will go out to lunch with his cousin. This is a big
positive change.
“Donald
is also an old movie buff, watching Turner Classic Movies on a daily basis,”
says Brian.
ECT effective treatment for depression
Dr.
Justin Piershalski, a VA psychiatrist specializing in ECT, says Weiss is a good
example of a patient who has benefited tremendously from ECT when nothing else
worked. “The ECT of today is not the ECT of the fifties or the ECT of the movies,”
says Dr. Piershalski, with the VA New York Harbor Healthcare System.
“Extensive
research and experience have allowed us to deliver what remains the most
effective treatment for depression with minimal memory impairment and side
effects in the large majority of cases.”
He
explains that, essentially, a patient under anesthesia, feeling nothing,
receives a small electrical charge which induces a seizure which stops after a
short time. This process is repeated 6-12 times over 3-4 weeks with the goal of
achieving remission of depression. The effect can be profound for many people.
After the treatments, the goal is to maintain the patient’s gains with
medication and therapy.
“Dr.
Piershalski is really very caring and most importantly communicative,” says
Brian, commenting on the care his cousin has received.
https://www.blogs.va.gov/VAntage/54490/electro-convulsive-therapy-veterans-depression/
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