Electroshock treatment reduces the risk of suicide in bipolar patients by 84%. It would therefore be effective and would allow a large proportion of patients to return to a normal life.
- Bipolar disorders affect around 5 million people in Europe
- Electroshock treatment has been analyzed on patients for whom other treatments had failed
- The risk of suicide was reduced by 84%
1% of Europeans, or around 5 million people, suffer from bipolar disorder. These are very common mental health disorders characterized by emotional instability and very severe mood swings. Patients who are affected by it undergo the repetition, the alternation or the coexistence of episodes of manic excitement – extreme feeling of well-being and euphoria – but also moments of melancholy and depression. This mixture may lead to an increased risk of suicide. Researchers are trying to limit it. They have just presented their work at a congress, the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Congress (ECNP), after partial publication in the journal The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15622975.2020.1770860?journalCode=iwbp20). According to them, electroconvulsive treatment, also called lelectroconvulsive therapy (ECT), could reduce the risk of suicide in high-risk bipolar patients by 84%.
I’ECT: the last chance for patients who have tried multiple treatments
“Electroshock treatment was invented in Italy, but despite this, currently there are very few clinics that offer it in Italy, underlines the doctor Giulio Emilio Brancati, of the Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine of the University of Pisa. Many patients who have failed with other treatments are referred to the Pisa clinic, which is why we were able to collect so much data.“The study is indeed groundbreaking, one of the largest ever conducted. In all, 670 patients with bipolar disorder were analyzed between January 2006 and July 2019. They were undergoing ECT at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Pisa, Italy.”This is a real-life study, not a clinical trialhe continues. On average, before arriving in our services, each patient had tried five different drugs, without success.“The electroshock treatment was in a way their last chance. This consists of delivering an electric current of variable intensity to the scalp of a patient, who is under general anesthesia.
For 72% of patients, theECT was effective
“77 of our patients were classified as being at serious risk of suicide, explains Giulio Emilio Brancati. After treatment, only two remained at severe risk, while 65 were no longer at risk.“The risk of suicide in these patients was therefore reduced by 84% thanks to the electroshock treatment. Another victory for this treatment: a 60% remission rate for the symptoms characteristic of bipolar “mixed states”. These are characterized by the association of melancholy and manic components at the same time. Patients who suffer from it may, for example, have a manic rhythm of thought and activity, while the content of their ideas is melancholic. Electroshock treatment has enabled people treated at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Pisa to free themselves from some of these symptoms, such as emotional over-reactivity, motor hyperactivity, aggressiveness and delusions of persecution or lack of cooperation. Finally, for 72% of them, ECT was an effective treatment, which enabled them to return to a more normal life. A major advance because almost a third of patients with bipolar disorders resist the treatments usually administered for this pathology.
Electroshock, a “saving treatment”
“This study again shows that ECT treatment can be life-saving and should not be withheld from patients with difficult-to-treat mood disorders such as bipolar disorder, said Henricus Ruhe, a psychiatrist at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, Netherlands, but who was not involved in the study. Unfortunately, despite the long-term evidence, electroconvulsive treatment is still controversial by the general public and the media, but also by many patients and relatives. (…) This prejudice unfairly stigmatizes patients and psychiatry, and denies effective treatment to seriously ill patients.“However, some psychiatrists are already using ECT for patients with severe depression, especially when standard treatments are not working.
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