Classics in ECT: Speed of Response to ECT- Scott and Colleagues in the British Journal of Psychiatry 1994

"Classics in ECT" brings you this paper from the British Journal of Psychiatry in 1994:

The pdf is here.

This short paper describes a small retrospective clinical chart review to look at speed of response to ECT.
Apparently, there was clinical lore that the first treatments in a series have little antidepressant effect. In fact, just the opposite is true, as this and many subsequent studies (including the CORE studies) have shown. The first treatments in an ECT course are typically the most powerful, and early response is a good predictor (but not perfect) of ultimate response.
Allan Scott is a well-known ECT practitioner and researcher who has contributed much to the ECT literature over the years. This is not the only paper he and colleagues wrote on this topic...
This 1994 paper is definitely worth a full read, only ~10 minutes.

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