Electrocerebral Shock Therapy

Abstract

WITH the advent of new procedures and drugs in the field of applied medicine, there may be a tendency to an overenthusiastic application of these methods, with the result that failures occur in frequently unlooked-for, untoward effects. The result is a swing in the opposite direction of conservatism and overcautiousness, and many patients who would benefit from a new form of treatment are refused it.The severe convulsive reactions encountered with metrazol shock and the early inexperience with methods of overcoming or subduing complications produced a timidity with respect to contraindications which carried over to electric shock therapy.It is not at all unlikely that the present seemingly drastic and terrifying forms of shock therapy will be superseded by some gentle chemical process based on a rational biochemical-physiologic understanding of the why and wherefore of the salutary response of certain psychoses to shock therapy. Until such time, however, the present day advantages to be obtained from shock therapy should be utilized in properly selected cases.A sufficiently large body of literature and experience has accumulated to give one information in reevaluating the indications for and contra¬ indications to cerebral electric shock treatment, a complete review of which is much too voluminous to incorporate in this paper. Some of the reviews with respect to the indications for, results of, and complications attending, electric shock treatment may be found in the works of various authors.1 From the Philadelphia Psychiatric Hospital.