Patients Tell of ECT Harms

In a new study, researchers asked 858 ECT recipients about their experiences. On all five questions in the survey, the majority of responders stated that ECT either had no benefit or actively made their lives worse. About half (49%) said it made their lives “much worse” or “very much worse.” About two-thirds (62%) said it had a negative impact on their quality of life, while only 20% said their quality of life was “much improved” or “very much improved.”

While some patients found it helpful, more patients found it unhelpful in every category. For instance, a quarter of patients (25%) said their presenting problem was “much improved” or “very much improved.” However, 30% said it was “much worse” or “very much worse.” The remainder landed somewhere in the middle.

“In conjunction with the absence of evidence that ECT is more effective than placebo, and the known long-term adverse effects on memory, these survey findings lead us to recommend a suspension of ECT in clinical settings pending independent large-scale placebo-controlled studies to determine whether ECT has any effectiveness relative to placebo, against which the many serious adverse effects can be weighed,” the researchers write.

The most unique aspect of this study is that the researchers asked actual patients about their experiences. Patient voices are mostly absent from the research literature on ECT.

The study was led by prolific researcher John Read at the University of East London, along with psychologists Lucy Johnstone and Chris Harrop. The authors also included ECT survivors Sarah Price Hancock, Lisa Morrison, and Sue Cunliffe. This was another unique aspect of this study; including as researchers those whose lives are impacted by the research is accepted practice in many fields, but it is rarely done in psychiatry.