Who invented electroshock therapy




















A Cleveland psychiatrist who was active then once told me that the doctors and nurses used to chase the patients around the room to get them to take Metrazol. Ironically, given that ECT would become iconic as a frightening treatment, the Italian researchers who proposed using electricity instead were searching for a safer, more humane and less fearsome method of inducing the seizures. Their colleagues, internationally, believed they had succeeded. Within only a few years of its invention, ECT was widely used in mental hospitals all over the world.

Many depictions of ECT in film and television have portrayed the therapy as an abusive form of control. There is probably no fictional story that so haunts our consciousness of a medical treatment. There is no question that ECT was benefiting patients then, but there is also a lot of evidence from that period showing that ECT, and the threat of it, were used in mental hospitals to control difficult patients and to maintain order on wards.

ECT was also physically dangerous when first developed. Now there are ways to mitigate those dangers. Current practice, known as modified ECT, uses muscle relaxants to avoid the physical dangers of a seizure and anesthesia to avoid pain from the electricity.

These modifications were learned early, but it took a while for them to become standard practice. He would have been able to witness all of this. This was not a major part of ECT practice, but this is not a comfort to gay people who received the treatment, for whom it could be traumatizing.

But it survived in the social memory of the therapy. By the s, the evidence that ECT was very effective for treating depression was robust. But there were also good reasons for patients to fear ECT. These reasons, combined with widespread revolts against authority and conformity that flourished in the s, also gave rise to a revolt against medical authority — the anti-psychiatry movement.

In its most extreme versions, the anti-psychiatry movement rejected the very idea of mental illness. But physical treatments, and most especially ECT, aroused its strongest rejections.

Most advocates of anti-psychiatry — even those who questioned the very reality of mental illness — were supportive of talk therapy. This provides another clue about why ECT occasions such deep divides. It evens raises questions about who we are, and what a person is. ECT use declined in the s and s, but revived starting in the early s. Meduna L. Z ges Neurol Psychiatr.

Whitrow M. Arch Psychiatr Nervenk. Hechst B. Orv Hetil. Anfalle bei schizophrenen Erkrankungen. Allgemeine Z Psychiat. Glaus A. Z ges Neurol Psychiat. Fink M. Historical Article: Autobiography of L. Convuls Ther. Arch Psychiatr Nervenkr. J ECT. Halle: Carl Marhold Verlagsbuchhandlung; Die Konvulsionstherapie der Schizophrenie. Passione R. Italian psychiatry in an international context: Ugo Cerletti and the case of electroshock. Hist Psychiatry. Shorter E, Healy D: Shock therapy.

A history of electroconvulsive treatment in mental illness. Bini L. Rivista sperimentale di freniatria. Neurotransmitters and electroconvulsive therapy. The immune system and electroconvulsive therapy for depression. Andrade C, Bolwig TG. Electroconvulsive therapy, hypertensive surge, blood-brain barrier breach, and amnesia: exploring the evidence for a connection.

Epigenetic effects of electroconvulsive seizures. ECT: its brain enabling effects: a review of electroconvulsive therapy-induced structural brain plasticity. Contemporary use and practice of electroconvulsive therapy worldwide. Brain Behav. American Psychiatric Association. Royal College of Psychiatrists. The ECT Handbook 3rd edition.

Efficacy and safety of electroconvulsive therapy in depressive disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Bennett AE. Metrazol convulsive shock therapy in depressive psychoses. Am J Med Sci. National Institute for Clinical Excellence. A meta-analysis of electroconvulsive therapy efficacy in depression. Efficacy of ECT in depression: a meta-analytic review. Am J Psychiatry. The role of ECT in suicide prevention. Continuation electroconvulsive therapy vs pharmacotherapy for relapse prevention in major depression: a multisite study from the Consortium for Research in Electroconvulsive Therapy CORE Arch Gen Psychiatry.

Survey of the practice of electroconvulsive therapy in teaching hospitals in India. Electroconvulsive therapy in China: clinical practice and research on efficacy. Indications for electroconvulsive treatment in schizophrenia: a systematic review. Schizophr Res. Use of electroconvulsive therapy for Asian patients with schizophrenia : Trends and correlates.

Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. Sinclair D, Adams CE. Treatment resistant schizophrenia: a comprehensive survey of randomised controlled trials. BMC Psychiatry. Gazdag G, Ungvari GS. Non-pharmacological biological therapies in schizophrenia. Neuropsychopharmacol Hung. Augmentation of clozapine with electroconvulsive therapy in treatment resistant schizophrenia: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

New York: Cambridge University Press; Clinical evidence for the efficacy of electroconvulsive therapy in the treatment of catatonia and psychoses.

In: Swartz CM Ed. Electroconvulsive and Neuromodulation Therapies. Maintenance ECT in schizophrenia: A systematic review. Psychiatry Res. Preventing traumatic complications in convulsive shock therapy by curare. Impastato DJ. Shorter E, Healy D.

Rutgers University Press ; Paterson AS. Ugo Cerletti, The British Journal of Psychiatry. Berrios GE. The scientific origins of electroconvulsive therapy: a conceptual history.

Variation of plasma cortisol levels in patients with depression after treatment with bilateral electroconvulsive therapy. Trends Psychiatry Psychother. Babini VP. Looking back: Italian psychiatry from its origins to Law of J Nerv Ment Dis.

The history of Italian psychiatry during Fascism. Ugo Cerletti : an early Italian father of electroshock and a pioneer in many other ways. May 18, Robert M.



0コメント

  • 1000 / 1000