ABSTRACT
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the electrical induction of the type of generalized cerebral seizure associated with a tonic-clonic convulsion, with the aim of treating an abnormal mental state or neurological disorder. Efficacious treatment requires a series of inductions given two or three times a week. The history of convulsive therapies in psychiatry is not to be confused with the history of the use of electricity in medicine.1 It was Cerletti, later aided by Bini, who developed the means of electrical induction that proved both safer and more reliable than chemical methods of inducing convulsions; the first patient, a man suffering from schizophrenia, was treated in Rome in 1938 and was eventually discharged from hospital in remission.2 Modern ECT is now modified: it is given under general anaesthesia and with drug treatment to reduce the extent of the convulsion.
