Is the Treatment Worse than the Disease?: Key Stakeholders' Views about the Use of Psychiatric Electroceutical Interventions for Treatment-Resistant Depression

Out on PubMed, from authors in Pennsylvania and Michigan, is this article:

Is the Treatment Worse than the Disease?: Key Stakeholders' Views about the Use of Psychiatric Electroceutical Interventions for Treatment-Resistant Depression.

Cabrera LY, Bluhm R, McCright AM, Achtyes ED.Neuroethics. 2025;18(1):1. doi: 10.1007/s12152-024-09573-2. Epub 2024 Oct 16.PMID: 40313710

The abstract is copied below:

Psychiatric electroceutical interventions (PEIs) use electrical or magnetic stimulation to treat psychiatric conditions. For depression therapy, PEIs include both approved treatment modalities, such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), and experimental neurotechnologies, such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) and adaptive brain implants (ABIs). We present results from a survey-based experiment in which members of four relevant stakeholder groups (psychiatrists, patients with depression, caregivers of adults with depression, and the general public) assessed whether treatment with one of four PEIs (ECT, rTMS, DBS, or ABIs) was better or worse than living with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and then provided a narrative explanation for their assessment. Overall, the prevalence of many narrative themes differed substantially by stakeholder group-with psychiatrists typically offering different reasons for their assessment than non-clinicians-but much less so by PEI modality. A large majority of all participants viewed their assigned PEI as better than living with TRD, with their reasons being a mix of positive views about the treatment and negative views about TRD. The minority of all participants who viewed their assigned PEI as worse than living with TRD tended to express negative affect toward it as well as emphasize its riskiness, negative side effects, and, to a lesser extent, its invasiveness. The richness of these narrative explanations enabled us to put in context and add depth to key patterns seen in recent survey-based research on PEIs.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12152-024-09573-2.

Keywords: Depression; Neuromodulation; Perceptions; Stakeholder; Survey; Vignette experiment.

The article is here.

And from the text:

This seems like an earnest effort to get information about neurostimulation techniques.

But the utility of the conclusions is extremely limited. First off, the 4 interventions are like a collection of apples, oranges and yellow dragon fruit. For example, the clinical evidence base for ECT is 100X that for DBS.  And let's not go to the issue of valuing uninformed opinion equally with that of experts. Finally, the term "electroceuticals", in its false linking of disparate therapies is objectionable. There are a few positive ECT testimonials, so there is that...