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- When All Else Fails
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- Long Haul Productions
Rob MacGruder tells of his lifelong battle with bipolar disorder and how ECT has repeatedly saved his life. The story follows MacGruder for almost a year as he falls into a severe depression, undergoes a series of ECT treatments and gradually recovers. During that time, MacGruder loses his job, and loses his children to the state.
First broadcast on All Things Considered in 2002.
"When All Else Fails" was the Winner of the National Mental Health Association best documentary award.
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Piece Description
Rob MacGruder tells of his lifelong battle with bipolar disorder and how ECT has repeatedly saved his life. The story follows MacGruder for almost a year as he falls into a severe depression, undergoes a series of ECT treatments and gradually recovers. During that time, MacGruder loses his job, and loses his children to the state. First broadcast on All Things Considered in 2002. "When All Else Fails" was the Winner of the National Mental Health Association best documentary award.
2 Comments
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Review of When All Else FailsIt's hard to imagine where else but public radio you might learn this story with the open mind required to change your mind. Rob MacGruder has a clear, honest voice that immediately takes "When All Else Fails" out of the "health issues" category and right into your kitchen. MacGruder is forthcoming and descriptive of his depression. Then he takes us on an audio tour of his previous year battling the disease. Even in those historic recordings when he rises under a dark fog of depression, MacGruder is as gentle and open as he is as narrator-after-the-fact, which is disarming and captivating. He explains that his best medicine is 0.8 amps delivered temporally for 1-2 seconds – ECT. He says it almost like "Easy Tea" By now you've nicely stepped around the Mary Shelley. MacGruder, all 6'3" 305 pounds of him, is as light as a promise on your ear. Dan Collison's superb production and Gary Covino's friction-fit edits bring the human story and the medical scenery into perfect focus. It's certainly a new vantage on electroshock. MacGruder continues to battle. He's fired from his job as a licensed clinical counselor for falling behind on paperwork. His children are seized because his apartment is messy. His doctor ups the dose to 3x/wk for 2 weeks. MacGruder is losing his keys but finding himself. No one knows how ECT works – on brain chemicals, by hormone production, like a computer reset button. But as MacGruder's doctor explains, "The response rate is really the highest out of any treatment we have in psychiatry... Fifty percent of patients who fail multiple medication trials will still have a substantial response from the ECT " After 30 ECTs, Rob MacGruder is telling us his story. Like many of our stories – of a father, worker, friend – he's trying for a happy ending. Rob's best medicine just happens to be electricity. Turn on to "When All Else Fails", one small success.
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Broadcast History
First broadcast on All Things Considered in 2002.
Transcript
HOST INTRO:
It’s critics consider it barbaric and ineffective…something closer to torture than to treatment…A discarded relic from the past, but proponents say it’s safe and effective…And the only hope for many people who suffer from severe depression, the controversial treatment once known as electroshock…proper name, electro-convulsive therapy or E-C-T…hasn’t faded away. Instead, it’s use is increasing. In the last year, more than one-hundred thousand Americans received E-C-T. One of them is Rob McGruder, who lives in Chicago. He says that electro-convulsive therapy saved his life. Produced by Dan Collison; this is Rob McGruder’s Story.
Tape
Rob’s Story was produced by Dan Collison and edited by Gary Covino for Long Haul Productions.
Read the full transcript
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Rob Shinnick
Posted on November 18, 2010 at 03:28 AM | Permalink
Rob... 45 years old... bipolar.
Me too. I have the same name, am the same age, and have the same condition, so as you can imagine, this piece really punched me in the gut. Fortunately my case is much milder. Though I haven't yet found any medication or treatment that helped me much, I'm certainly not ready for ECT yet! Yikes! My heart goes out to our narrator, here. I see this piece is six years old and wonder how that other Rob is doing now. I hope he's managing well. It sure sounds like he's had his share of misery.