Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is making something of a comeback because it remains a paragon of efficacy amidst other relatively disappointing treatments. The dexamethasone suppression test (DST), once the poster child for a laboratory test in psychiatry, is of minor theoretical and historical interest. Edward Shorter and Max Fink1 intertwine the stories of ECT, DST, and the hypothalamic-pitu...

This is the third essay on consent to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in this issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics. It contains a psychiatrist's criticisms of the lack of procedural guidelines, in Britain's recently amended Mental Health Act, for obtaining consent to ECT from involuntarily committed patients and her comments on preceding articles by Richard Sherlock and Harry Lesser. Taylor...

Government regulatory involvement in electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is due to several factors, including patient advocate groups, prior abuse by psychiatrists, and a general trend of state authority to move into areas traditionally governed by medical authorities. Regardless of the specific reasons, ECT is both highly effective in the treatment of many psychiatric disorders and heavily regulat...

Successful electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) requires close collaboration between the psychiatrist and the anaesthetist. During the past decades, anaesthetic techniques have evolved to improve the comfort and safety of administration of modern ECT. We review the literature and discuss the selection, preparation, and management. Specifically, the general principles and the pre-ECT evaluation are d...

BACKGROUND Although a rapid and efficient psychiatric treatment, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) induces memory impairment. Modified ECT requires anesthesia for safety purposes. Although traditionally found to exert amnesic effects in general anesthesia, which is an inherent part of modified ECT, some anesthetics have been found to protect against ECT-induced cognitive impairment. However, the ...

Recent advances in knowledge about effective administration of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has placed great emphasis on the importance of good training and supervision of those administering it. The American Psychiatric Association requires that doctors be specifically accredited before they are allowed to give ECT. In England and Wales training is much more informal and ECT is often given ...

background: lennox-gastaut syndrome (lgs) is an epileptic encephalopathy, characterized by drug-resistant multiple seizure types. the aim of this study was to determine if the adjunctive use of electroconvulsive therapy (ect) in patients with lgs and drug-resistant epilepsy is efficacious in decreasing their seizure frequency and also to investigate its safety and tolerability.   methods: this ...

BACKGROUND Although electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is widely used to treat psychiatric disorders such as depression, its precise neural mechanisms remain unknown. AIMS To investigate the time course of changes in cerebral blood flow during acute ECT. METHOD Cerebral blood flow was quantified serially prior to, during and after acute ECT in six patients with depression under anaesthesia usi...

Background: Training methods to reduce the anxiety caused by the electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) should match the necessity of communicating with the patients suffering from mood disorders. Aim: This study aimed to compare the effects of face-to-face and multimedia education on the anxiety induced by the ECT. Method: This randomized controlled clinical trial was conducted on 75 patients with mo...

Background: Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) is a successful treatment option for various psychiatric disorders. It is performed under general anesthesia where succinylcholine is the preferred muscle relaxant in this process. However its several contraindications and potential adverse effects, and the fact that it is not always available should be considered. Therefore, finding an effective and ...