ABSTRACT
In the present state of our knowledge convulsive therapy should be reserved for psychotics, especially depressive states, such as involutional melancholia, and only for such psychoneurotics who are quite inaccessible to a psychological approach—with perhaps the sole exception of a few very severe cases of obsessional neurosis who are finding life pretty intolerable. Gillespie records that in 30 cases of involutional melancholia treated by him 19 made a good recovery and 5 improved, while in 98 depressives of the manic-depressive type 45 recovered and 28 improved. He considers it unjustifiable to make a patient submit to the prolonged misery of depression with its accompanying risk of suicide or exhaustion without resorting to electric convulsive therapy, even though recovery may not be effected. In recent times there seems to be developing a preference amongst physical-treatment advocates for experiment in the use of electric convulsive therapy while the patient is under insulin-induced sopor.
