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Review of ECT prescription and outcome in depression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Carol Robertson  and
John M. Eagles
Carol Robertson*
Affiliation:
Royal Cornhill Hospital, Aberdeen, AB9 2ZH
John M. Eagles
Affiliation:
Royal Cornhill Hospital
*
∗Correspondence
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Abstract

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Few recent studies have investigated the prescription of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to depressed patients and their progress thereafter under ordinary clinical conditions. From case records, 412 courses of ECT were studied. ECT was efficacious in the short term, especially for patients with psychotic depression and for those over 65 years of age. Fifty-three per cent of patients required readmission in the six months following the index course. Neither age nor psychosis predicted whether readmission occurred. While short-term outcome is good, notably for the elderly and the psychotically depressed, patients are highly liable to relapse after ECT. High quality after-care is thus of paramount importance.

Type
Original Papers
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 21 , Issue 8 , August 1997 , pp. 498 - 500
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

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