Electroconvulsive therapy: lack of studies is not the same as lack of effect

Abstract

Read and Cunliffe argue against electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).1 Attitudes to ECT can be formed early in a career. As a young doctor, I witnessed the double blind, placebo controlled trial of the short term efficacy of ECT for inpatients with depression that was conducted at Mapperley Hospital, Nottingham, in the early 1980s.2 After the …