Electroshock therapy is effective about 50% of the time. It works by inducing a seizure to treat depression. Those who respond to the therapy typically relapse within twelve months, so electroshock therapy isn't a long-term solution (if you can call it a solution at all). Electroshock therapy is still used today although it is rarely the first treatment for depression or bipolar disorder. It requires informed consent, which means that if a patient refuses the treatment, it cannot be forced onto them.
The health risks of electroshock therapy are equivalent to that of general anesthesia. When I was reading the book, I assumed that electroshock therapy was doing the opposite of what it was supposed to, but that isn't necessarily true. It's safe to have the treatment when you're pregnant!
It is true that electroshock therapy may have been detrimental for Esther. It is also true that electroshock therapy could have been quite helpful for Esther. No matter what the exact cause of Esther's renewed well-being is, she ends the novel ready to leave the asylum and away from electroshock therapy.
This was a pretty new form of treatment at the time Esther undergoes it, and from what I understand the process is even more sophisticated and targeted now, but it seems to me that we see both sides in her experience. First, under Gordon's authority, she experiences a nightmarish electrocution that feels like punishment to Esther (looping back to the opening allusion to the Rosenbergs); but Nolan confidently insists that he did it wrong, and when it's done correctly it doesn't hurt and it can help. And sure enough, Esther experiences an immediate sense of relief, of "fresh air" and the bell jar lifting, under Nolan's care. Within the plot of the novel, electroshock (combined with Insulin, and Nolan's generally positive influence on Esther's life in other, less tangible ways) seems instrumental in her recovery. While this novel is plenty critical of the psychiatric establishment, I wouldn't describe it as a novel that's fundamentally critical of electroshock.
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