Most severely depressed patients who are given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) - commonly known is electroshock therapy - experience improved health-related quality of life that lasts for at least 6 months, a new study shows.

“Although ECT is well established as the most efficacious treatment for depression, it is still subject to controversy,” lead investigator Dr. W. Vaughn McCall told Reuters Health. “Some of the controversy continues to be stirred up by well-organized philosophical opposition to ECT,” which claims that ECT has “overwhelmingly negative” effects.

“So we did this study to shed some light on this very basic idea: Are people better off or worse for having had ECT?” McCall explained.

The researcher from Wake Forest University Health Sciences in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and colleagues in New York followed a group of 283 severely depressed patients who underwent a course of ECT - on average, seven sessions.

Patients were assessed before treatment was started, approximately 4 days after their last ECT session and then again at 24 weeks.

Health-related quality of life was significantly improved immediately after ECT in 87 percent of the patients and at 24 weeks in 78 percent, the researchers report in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

“Even though some people didn’t meet full criteria for remission,” McCall noted, “they experienced some improvement in symptoms and correspondingly they report some global improvement in quality of life.”

“Some agencies have recommended that ECT be restricted in use because of perceived gaps in knowledge regarding its effects on health-related quality of life,” the research team points out in the report. “Our results indicate that a restrictive public policy toward ECT is not warranted” on this basis.

SOURCE: Journal of Affective Disorders, February 2006.