Professor defends electroconvulsive therapy against Hollywood’s portrayal

A top Tayside psychiatrist says a treatment stigmatised by Hollywood saves lives.

Professor Keith Matthews was commenting after a national report revealed that over 5,000 ”stimulations” were delivered to patients in Scotland last year.

A total of 418 patients, including some in Tayside and Fife, were treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) last year.

The treatment is given to people severely disabled by depression, who have shown no response to medication or psychological therapies.

Professor Matthews said: ”Most people get their idea of what ECT is through things like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and occasional Hollywood portrayals. This is not helpful for patients and not helpful for their relatives and carers.

”It makes people who really need the treatment very reluctant to have it and hugely stigmatises the treatment. ECT is one of the single most effective treatments in the whole of medicine.”