BOSTON -- Former Massachusetts First Lady Kitty Dukakis revealed Monday that to treat her depression, she was undergoing shock therapy, a treatment that doctors say can be the only effective way for some patients to battle severe depression.

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Watch Janet Wu's Report ELECTROCONVULSIVE THERAPY Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) involves giving a paitent a series of controlled electrical impulses to the brain. Patients are given muscle relaxants and general anesthesia, to prevent convulsions and pain. ECT is generally used for patients with severe depression that does not respond to medication or when the patient may attempt suicide before drugs could work. One study shows that patients with severe depression who have ECT will show improvement in 80 percent of cases. Risks of ECT are about the same with any surgical procedure involving anesthesia. Side effects can include nausea, headaches, muscle aches and confusion, especially immediately following the procedure. Some patients report partial memory loss, but memories usually return within a few months. Some memory loss may also actually be amnesia typically related to depression, rather than to ECT. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES American Psychiatric Association on ECT. ECT.org offers an opposing view, saying the procedure can be harmful and misused.

NewsCenter 5's Janet Wu reported that electroconvulsive therapy as it is practiced today bears little similarity to what was shown in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," in which Jack Nicholson's character suffered brain damage after a session.

Dukakis' doctor, psychiatrist Dr. Charles Welch, said that patients are first given injections to relax their muscles and anesthesia to put them to sleep.

"It's about a two-second electrical stimulation," Welch said. "It's applied to the right side of the head. The patient doesn't feel this. They are asleep, and so there is no electrical sensation or pain."

The stimulation is followed by a 30-second seizure that is registered on heart and brain monitors and sometimes by a slight twitching of the fingertips.

"This electrical stimulus triggers a grand mal seizure," Welch said. "Now, if the patient didn't have medications, then they would have a convulsion, but because of the medications, the body is motionless during the treatment."

Welch said that no one is quite sure how electroconvulsive therapy works to help deal with symptoms of depression.

"The seizure resets brain chemistry in ways that we don't completely understand and brings the chemical functioning of the brain back to normal," he said.

Most patients require six to eight treatments over the course of two to three weeks. Welch said that the treatment is only appropriate for about 10 percent of his patients suffering from severe depression.

"Depression is an excruciating physical illness. People suffer intensely," Welch said. "It's also a potentially lethal illness. Untreated depression has about a 30 percent mortality in two years, which is a higher mortality than most forms of cancer."

The harshest side effect of the treatment is temporary memory loss. Dukakis told NewsCenter 5's Natalie Jacobson that she has no recollection of a five-day trip to Paris and movies that she saw shortly after the treatments.

"How long it takes to come back varies from person to person," Welch said. "Some people find that within a couple of days their memory is back to normal. Some people find that it takes several months."

Dukakis said that the side effects were worth being relieved of her symptoms.

"The tradeoff is extraordinary for me," she said. "I would not want to go back to where I was before. And so I don't remember certain things, and that's fine."

Electroconvulsive therapy is not a permanent cure. Welch said 50 percent of his patients begin experiencing depression again within a year. A treatment one month after the initial series can delay a relapse.

It costs about $1,000 per session, which is covered by nearly all insurance policies. While expensive, Welch said that it's more cost-effective than job loss and hospitalization, which most patients would otherwise suffer.