system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What does the electric shock therapy do in a mental hospital?

I don't know the exact name for it, but an example of it is what happens to the old lady in Requiem for a Dream at the very end.

On that note, how does injecting painful liquids that make the patient squirm and scream help treat their mental illness?
gpt
The proper name for that kind of therapy is *electroconvulsive therapy*, or *ECT*. 

The way ECT is done in real life isn't exactly like in the movies. In real life, the first step is to first use medicine to make the patient fall asleep. Patients are never awake during ECT.

Then, they inject the patient with a different medicine that makes it so they can't move. It makes their muscles turn off and go limp. This is important because of the next step.

Then, they shock the patient's brain with electricity. The idea is to overpower the brain's own electrical circuitry and force it into a seizure. Usually seizures make people shake and flail wildly, which could hurt them. Because the patient's muscles are temporarily turned off, though, that part doesn't happen.

Nobody knows exactly why, but all that electricity kind of reboots the patient's brain. This can help the patient recover from bad mental illnesses that they haven't been able to treat in any other way. It causes other problems, though, like headaches, memory loss, and confusion. Sometimes patients and doctors decide it's worth it though.