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"Before March 2006, I was on medications and doing talk therapy, but I was going belly up every other day," Gregory said. "I was bouncing off the walls."

By March 2006, he was ready for something -- anything -- that could help him deal with his mental illness. Gregory agreed to take part in electroconvulsive therapy at UNC-Chapel Hill's Department of Psychiatry.

ECT at UNC, Duke

At UNC-CH, doctors oversee 30 to 45 electroconvulsive treatments weekly. The treatment continues to evolve, but it's not the subject of as much research as behavioral drugs, Hill said.

"It's been studied for years, but the reality is, since the drug companies aren't involved, there isn't a lot of money available for ECT," he said.

Duke Medical Center performs 25 to 30 treatments a week, said Dr. David Steffens, head of the division of geriatric psychiatry at Duke.

"We have quite a number of people whom ECT has successfully pulled out of a severe depression, who now require maintenance ECT to ensure that the depression doesn't reoccur," Steffens said.

Side effects can include short-term memory loss, sore muscles and headaches. Some former patients and a few professionals have worked actively against the therapy, charging that it leaves permanent damage and memory loss.

"Every time that ECT has been rigorously studied, it doesn't pan out that there should be a great concern about permanent brain damage or memory loss," Steffens said, adding that doctors cannot ignore the risk of memory loss.

The American Psychiatric Association and the National Institute of Mental Health are on record supporting the treatment for patients whose severe illness resists other treatments.

Trade-offs in therapy

Treatments using electric stimulus usually begin with a course of six to 12 sessions, scheduled three times a week for a month or so. Some patients, such as Gregory, return for maintenance treatments.

"What the field is focused on in recent years is to try to improve the success rate while minimizing side effects," Hill said.

"We are looking to use the lowest amount of electricity -- the less energy you use, the better," he said. At most, he noted, electroconvulsive therapy uses about a third of the amount of energy that typically jolts a heart patient during defibrillation.

At the holding area, Gregory talked about his broadcast career, about the wreck his life became and about how electroconvulsive therapy has worked for him. In hospital gown, he went through what has become a familiar process during his monthly treatments: getting ready for the IV muscle relaxant and other preparatory work that precedes the electric stimulus.

"I had my reservations about doing this," he said. "The stigma about this kind of therapy is really unfair. The ECT has gotten me to the the point where I have learned things about myself I never knew."

He said 2007 was the first calendar year in at least five in which he had no psychiatric hospitalizations. Richard Wynne, pastor of St. John's Baptist Church in Raleigh, said he remembers Gregory's trials before he tried electroconvulsive therapy.

"When he first became a member, there were times that we knew he was depressed," Wynne said. "He would be so depressed that he'd take his medication and when it didn't work, he'd take more of it. He ended up overdosing."

Gregory now talks to people with depression about electroconvulsive therapy, hoping that others with the illness might be able to retreat from the brink, too.

"I will have these obsessions or diagnoses for the rest of my life," he said. "With the technology available to me now, I will have a better than even chance of stability."

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