It was midnight and tears kept coming. All I could think about is how puffy my eyes would look in the morning. And the other thing I couldn’t get out of my head was the image of my brother Scott in his long khaki pants, sweat-drenched tee-shirt, jacket and ill-fitting shoes wandering around my sister’s backyard. Actually his shoes fit fine. It’s just that even though they were slip-on shoes, he didn’t quit have his heels all the way down into either shoe.

It was the first time I saw Scott since his ten electroconvulsive treatments (ECT), otherwise known as shock therapy. In January, his psychiatrist from the nation’s top mood disorder clinic at Mayo in Minnesota suggested ECT as the best treatment option for his severe bipolar that was resistant to the plethora of medications he tried over the years to combat his suicidal thoughts and manic behaviors. For…