COVID Psychosis-Mention of ECT in the NY Times
From the New York Times on December 28, 2020:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/health/covid-psychosis-mental.html?smid=em-share
 | Most had no history of mental illness and became psychotic weeks after contracting the virus. Cases are expected to remain rare but are being reported worldwide. By Pam Belluck Almost immediately ... www.nytimes.com |
This sentence appears near the end of the article:
The physical therapist who planned to murder her children had more difficulty. “Every day, she was getting worse,” Dr. Goueli said. “We tried probably eight different medicines,” including antidepressants, antipsychotics and lithium. “She was so ill that we were considering electroconvulsive therapy for her because nothing was working.”
I am blogging about this article because whenever ECT is mentioned in the NY Times it is noteworthy. Most such mentions are negative or gratuitously dismissive; this one is only slightly negative in tone, but it does imply that ECT is a "last resort" treatment consideration.
The subject of COVID-related psychotic symptoms is also of interest to our field, and we will be watching for reports of ECT use for this indication in the future.
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