March 19, 1999

When a bill that threatened to curb access to ECT was introduced in the Arizona House of Representatives this year, former CBS newscaster Mary Jo West came to the chamber to implore legislators to allow psychiatrists continued access to the procedure that may have saved her life.

West, who has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show to share her story of ECT and depression, was the first woman television news anchor at CBS affiliate KOOL-TV, she told Psychiatric News. She also anchored a late-night CBS news feature called "Nightwatch." She now works for the city of Phoenix producing documentaries.

Although she had suffered from dysthymia since she was a college freshman, she was diagnosed only after she suffered a bout of mania followed by depression while covering the 1980 Democratic and Republican conventions. She was committed to a psychiatric hospital in 1981 (coincidentally the same day that President Ronald Reagan was wounded in an assassination attempt, she noted). She received three ECT treatments and was well enough to be released after only four days of confinement.

"Two weeks later I was back on the air anchoring the news, and 15 months later I was back on the air anchoring CBS 'Nightwatch.' I never told a soul. My mother didn't even know."

The depression never went away completely, and in 1993 it worsened. Today she takes Prozac and remains mentally stable. "I never plan to get off it," she commented.

Despite the difficulty of baring her soul to legislators and others, said West, she now views public testimony about her condition as "a kind of a ministry, because the darkness is so horrible. There are so many people who remain in that darkness and don't get educated about the facts about clinical depression."

When she was suffering from her own depression years ago at CBS, she didn't know that famed "60 Minutes" anchor Mike Wallace was sitting across the street in his office "literally going through the same thing," said West. She anticipates meeting Wallace for the first time at an upcoming meeting in New York.