How ECT helps severely depressed
Aberdeen researchers have discovered how a controversial but effective treatment in psychiatry acts on the brain in people who are severely depressed.
Electroconvulsive therapy or ECT – which involves anaesthetising a patient and electrically inducing a seizure – is the most potent treatment option for patients with serious mood disorder.
Despite being used successfully in clinical practice around the world for more than 70 years, the underlying mechanisms of ECT have so far remained unclear.
Now a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and scientists at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, has shown for the first time that ECT affects the way different parts of the brain involved in depression