Things have moved on from the era of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. ECT is one of the best treatments available It might come as quite a surprise to learn that, as a psychiatrist, if I ever had the misfortune to develop severe depression, my treatment of choice would be electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Why? Well, to put it simply, ECT is the most rapid treatment for severe depression that we currently have to offer – with a recent study in the BMJ highlighting its effectiveness . For the uninitiated, ECT is a medical procedure in which an anaesthetised patient has a small electrical current applied to their scalp in order to induce a seizure for the purposes of treating severe mental illnesses and occasionally neurological disorders too. Each treatment takes just a few minutes and is usually administered two or three times a week. ECT course length varies depending on the needs of the patient, but on average eight to 12 treatments are given. Continue reading...