Electroconvulsive therapy is an evidence-based intervention for certain types of depression. It should be “accessible” in every state although access to psychiatric care is often questionable unfortunately.
Every treatment for anything has benefits and harms, there is evidence that the benefits of ECT outweighs the harms in select patients (like those refractory to conventional treatments) so it has been accepted medical practice for a while now.
You certainly wouldn’t jump to put a patient on ECT. This is jogging my medical student memory but when I rotated on psychiatry the patients who underwent this procedure had quite severe and disabling symptoms, it seemed to help although I’m outside of my scope.
It’s certainly accepted in the medical community though.
Which State did this take place in?