Depression: Who Will Gentle Electric Shocks Help?

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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Electricity can drive away severe depression - even when medication and psychotherapy fail. The disadvantage: Electroconvulsive therapy is very complex. And: It doesn't help all patients either. Brain scans now show who the treatment is promising for.

Depression can usually be treated very well. Depression, inner emptiness, hopelessness and listlessness: in two thirds of patients, the stressful symptoms disappear thanks to modern antidepressants or psychotherapy - or they are at least reduced to a tolerable level. But then there is still the last third of depressed people who simply do not want conventional therapy to work.

Controlled seizure

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), also known as electroconvulsive therapy, often helps. Electric shocks are used to artificially trigger seizures in the patient's brain under anesthesia, similar to epilepsy. Electricity therapy is very effective: 70 percent of patients who previously could not be helped respond well to it.

This treatment has been used for decades. However, no one knew how it actually worked. A research group at the Münster University Hospital led by Dr. Ronny Redlich has now found this out with the help of images from the magnetic resonance tomograph: The electrical stimulation apparently stimulates the formation of nerve cells in that area of ​​the brain where people with depression have less gray matter than healthy people. More precisely: in the hippocampus. This brain region plays a central role in information processing and is necessary in order to be able to store memory contents.

Brain scans predict success or failure

And the researchers made another important discovery: Using the MRI images, they were able to predict with a hit rate of 80 percent who the treatment will work for and who it will probably not be able to help. Together with computer scientists, the researchers have developed a computer program that can be used to evaluate the images of the patient's brain. This is crucial, because an ECT is very costly: the doctors have to give a patient electric shocks around twelve times for the therapy to work optimally.

“This is a groundbreaking success,” says clinic director Volker Arolt. "If the results are confirmed, in the future we will not have to subject the patients for whom ECT does not promise any success to this complex treatment, but can try other therapies right away."

Study participants wanted

The Münster scientists are currently looking for volunteers for computed tomography examinations in order to be able to continue their studies - both people with various forms of depression and healthy people. These volunteer participants do not receive electroconvulsive treatment.

Don't be afraid of the treatment

By the way, nobody needs to be afraid of electroconvulsive therapy these days: The idea that many people have in front of their eyes from films about the early days of "electroshock therapy" no longer applies today. Since the treatment is carried out under anesthesia, which slackens all muscles, and is much milder, it is far less stressful today. In addition, it has hardly any side effects. These include temporary memory problems, disorientation and headaches. Memory problems rarely last longer. The risk of more severe complications is the same as that of general anesthesia.

Source: Press release, Münster University Hospital, July 21, 2016

Anyone interested in participating in the study and living in the Münster or Marburg area can contact the scientists at http://for2107.de/.

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