This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (7)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Psychiatry  • Depression  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Time to Bring It Out of the Shadows

Richard M. Glass, MD

JAMA. 2001;285:1346-1348.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is one of the most controversial treatments in all of medicine. There are a number of reasons for this. The discovery in the 1930s that inducing a series of generalized seizures, initially with chemicals,¹ later with electric current,² could cause the recovery of patients with severe and previously untreatable mental disorders produced a wave of enthusiasm that eventually led to a period of indiscriminate use and misuse in the middle decades of the 20th century.^3-4 This period of abuse created, perhaps deservedly at that time, a bad reputation for an effective treatment modality. That reputation was enhanced by the immediate adverse effects of bitten tongues and even fractured bones and teeth caused by the induction of generalized seizures, and the painful effects of electroshocks administered without anesthesia when they did not successfully induce a seizure with loss of consciousness.

The 1975 movie One . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliation: Dr Glass is Deputy Editor, JAMA.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLE

Continuation Pharmacotherapy in the Prevention of Relapse Following Electroconvulsive Therapy: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Harold A. Sackeim, Roger F. Haskett, Benoit H. Mulsant, Michael E. Thase, J. John Mann, Helen M. Pettinati, Robert M. Greenberg, Raymond R. Crowe, Thomas B. Cooper, and Joan Prudic
JAMA. 2001;285(10):1299-1307.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Electroconvulsive Therapy: Evidence and Challenges
Fink and Taylor
JAMA 2007;298:330-332.
FULL TEXT  

Can the Bispectral Index Be Used to Predict Seizure Time and Awakening After Electroconvulsive Therapy?
White et al.
Anesth. Analg. 2003;96:1636-1639.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Anesthesia for Electroconvulsive Therapy
Ding and White
Anesth. Analg. 2002;94:1351-1364.
FULL TEXT  

Medication After Successful ECT Reduces Depression Relapse
JWatch General 2001;2001:5-5.
FULL TEXT  

Does Continuation Pharmacotherapy After ECT Improve Relapse Rates?
JWatch Psychiatry 2001;2001:6-6.
FULL TEXT