《Shock》是探討電氣痙攣治療（electroconvulsive therapy, ECT）、它的醫史、對它的兩極化爭辯和它的復原力的一本具權威性、開創性的書，書中，也夾雜了本書作者之ㄧ的Kitty Dukakis的個人真實故事。

罹患憂鬱症的人數每年加速遞增，對於病患和其家屬來說，只能求助於藥物治療或是心理諮詢治療，不過約有五分之ㄧ的病患對於這些治療是不見起色的，可能會嘗試所謂的「電氣痙攣治療」，也就是在腦中植入電極。

有醫師認為在腦中植入電極也許是另ㄧ個對重度憂鬱症的新治療契機，不過也有人持相反意見。《Shock》就是第一本提出電氣痙攣治療的真實解答。

本書作者之ㄧKitty Dukakis，連三任美國麻塞諸塞州州長的妻子，第一手瞭解到電氣痙攣治療真的能夠解救生命。過去超過二十年來，她長年與自己的嚴重憂鬱症抗戰，試過無數的新藥物和治療，不過直到接受在腦中植入電極，她才重獲新生。她在書中與讀者分享了自己的親身故事，同時，與得獎的醫藥報導記者Larry Tye共同完成此書。

Kitty Dukakis, the wife of former Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, is a founding member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an advocate for programs to battle homelessness and promote refugee rights, and an overseer at the New England Conservatory of Music. She revealed her ongoing struggle to overcome depression and her accompanying addictions to alcohol and diet pills in her 1990 memoir, Now You Know.

Larry Tye is an award-winning journalist who spent fifteen years with the The Boston Globe, where his primary beat was medicine. He has taught journalism at Boston University, Northeastern, Tufts, and Harvard, and now runs a Boston-based fellowship program for medical journalists. Tye is also the author of The Father of Spin, Home Lands, and Rising from the Rails.