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Which Depressed Patients will Respond to Electroconvulsive Therapy?

The Search for Biological Predictors of Recovery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Allan I. F. Scott
Allan I. F. Scott*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Kennedy Tower, Royal Edinburgh Hospital, Morningside Park, Edinburgh EH10 5HF
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Abstract

A small yet significant minority of contemporary patients with endogenous depressive illness who are treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) gain little or no benefit. It is argued that the use of clinical features alone may not improve the ability to predict outcome after ECT. Many biological measures have been used to attempt to identify depressed patients for whom ECT would be an effective treatment, but none has yet been shown to be superior to clinical predictors. Depressed patients show a wide range of physiological responses to the first treatment of a course of ECT. Of these physiological responses, estimations of seizure threshold and of the release of posterior pituitary peptides merit further investigation as putative predictors of recovery.

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The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 154 , Issue 1 , January 1989 , pp. 8 - 17
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Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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