Insulin Shock Therapy - Effects

Effects

Although a few psychiatrists (including Sakel) claimed success rates for insulin coma therapy of over 80 percent in the treatment of schizophrenia, and a few argued that it merely sped up remission in those patients who would undergo remission anyway, the consensus at the time was somewhere in between - claiming a success rate of about 50 percent in patients who had been ill for less than a year (about double the spontaneous remission rate) with no influence on relapse.

Sakel suggested the therapy worked by "causing an intensification of the tonus of the parasympathetic end of the autonomic nervous system, by blockading the nerve cell, and by strengthening the anabolic force which induces the restoration of the normal function of the nerve cell and the recovery of the patient." The shock therapies in general had developed on the erroneous premise that epilepsy and schizophrenia rarely occurred in the same patient. Another theory was that patients were somehow "jolted" out of their mental illness.

The hypoglycemia (pathologically low glucose levels) that resulted from ICT made patients extremely restless, sweaty, and liable to further convulsions and "after-shocks". In addition, patients invariably emerged from the long course of treatment "grossly obese". The most severe risks of insulin coma therapy were death and brain damage, resulting from irreversible or prolonged coma respectively. A study at the time actually claimed that many of the cases of brain damage were actually therapeutic improvement because they showed "loss of tension and hostility". Mortality risk estimates varied from about one percent to 4.9 percent.