According to a new study, despite the fact that over the last decade, two treatments which are often castigated in the media, and have raised both public and professional concern, antidepressants such as Prozac and Seroxat, and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), remain the most effective treatments for moderate to severe depression.
ECT was first used in 1938 by two Italian physicians to treat seizures in a schizophrenic patient, currently its use is limited to patients suffering from severe depression.
How it works remains unclear but when properly used ECT is effective in treating depression; it is thought that ECT temporarily redirects the electrochemical processes of the brain.
The author Professor Klaus Ebmeier of the University of Edinburgh and three colleagues carried out a review of recent developments and current controversies in the treatment of depression, and say they found that ECT remains the most effective treatment for some.
While psychotherapies are now generally recommended for the treatment of milder depression or as an adjunct to antidepressant drugs in more severe illness, drug treatments remain the mainstay of antidepressant therapy.
But the researchers say ECT, is the most effective treatment especially for patients with psychotic symptoms, such as delusions and hallucinations.
Ebmeier, a psychiatrist, says recent panic in the media suggesting the suicidal effects and dependence-inducing potential of antidepressants have shifted the balance of publicly perceived risk against them, but both their effectiveness and their ready availability, make them the likely choice for most patients.