I worked as a nurse in Psychiatric hospital in the mid 1970's. The treatment of depression was much the same. However by that time we were giving patients general anasthesia before the 'Shock Treatments'. We called it ECT.
Shock treatments were given as it was found that epileptics never suffer from depression - the shock is given to produce a 'Fit' as in epilepsy.
Interestingly a Hospital in Manchester had a fault with it's ECT machine and it was not producing any electricity. They had the same results with the patients.....just as many recovered as when the machine was working correctly!
I never saw the Insulin/Reaction therapy used - but you would certainly put weight on with it (I know, I'm a diabetic...lol)

I found your post really interesting. I know nothing about electric shock therapy, so forgive me if I sound naive, but did it actually work? It sounds awful and experimental. I missed the ref to the insulin reaction treatment in the book as I'd not heard of it before. I know you said you'd not seen it in practise, but can you shed any light on it at all? Can anyone else?

When Esther was having the insulin reaction treatment, I thought Plath was implying Esther was pregnant because she'd put on weight!! (I think Esther made a ref that she looked pg too). Because Esther referred to a baby very early on in the book, I kept looking for clues throughout the remainder of the novel! So I totally missed the thing about the insulin treatment. What am I like!

I think they did get good results with the ECT - Shock therapy, but it did seem rather like Black Magic or something! The patients never felt a thing, just groggy from the anasthetic. They were only out for about 10mins in all.This is what Wikidpeadia says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy I'm glad to see it's not used much today! The Insulin Convulsive Therapy resulted in lowered blood pressure, sweating, increased heart rate, and increased breathing rate, this caused the body to go into extreme stress & the body's defenses reacted causing a 'shock' to the system. I suppose they would try anything in those days! we have much better medicines today. They also used both these treatments for treating other psychiatric disorders