Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T03:54:50.891Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An efficacy study of electroconvulsive therapy and antidepressants in the treatment of primary depression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Sharon Homan ,
Peter A. Lachenbruch ,
George Winokur  and
Paula Clayton
Sharon Homan*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St Louis, Missouri, and the Departments of Psychiatry and Preventive Medicine, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Peter A. Lachenbruch
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St Louis, Missouri, and the Departments of Psychiatry and Preventive Medicine, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
George Winokur
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St Louis, Missouri, and the Departments of Psychiatry and Preventive Medicine, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Paula Clayton
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St Louis, Missouri, and the Departments of Psychiatry and Preventive Medicine, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
*
1Address for correspondence: Dr Sharon Homan, Department of Preventive Medicine/Environmental Health, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa, 52242, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Synopsis

At discharge, a significantly larger percentage of unipolar patients treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) respond with marked improvement as compared with those receiving antidepressants or other treatment. No treatment appears to be more efficacious in the bipolar group. In studying the covariables related to the length of time between hospitalizations, we found that the type of treatment is not important for the unipolar patient, whereas a combination of ECT and antidepressants lengthens the time to rehospitalization of the bipolar patient. Previous hospitalization is an important predictor variable for all patients.

Type
Research Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , August 1982 , pp. 615 - 624
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Avery, D. & Winokur, G. (1977). The efficacy of electroconvulsive therapy in depression. Biological Psychiatry 12, 507–523.Google ScholarPubMed
Avery, D. & Winokur, G. (1978). Suicide, attempted suicide, and relapse rates in depression. Archives of General Psychiatry 35, 749–753.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bratfos, O. & Haug, J. O. (1965). Electroconvulsive therapy and antidepressant drugs on manic-depressive disease, treatment results at discharge and three months later. Acta psychiatrica scandinavica 41, 588–596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breslow, N. E. (1974). Covariance analysis of censored survival data. Biometrics 30, 89–100.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Breslow, N. E. (1975). Analysis of survival data under the proportional hazards model. International Statistical Review 43, 45–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, D. R. (1972). Regression models and life tables (with discussion). Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (B) 34, 187–220.Google Scholar
Cox, D. R. (1975). Partial likelihood. Biometrika 62, 269–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feighner, J. P., Robins, E., Guze, S. B., Woodruff, R. A., Winokur, G. & Munoz, R. (1972). Diagnostic criteria for use in psychiatric research. Archives of General Psychiatry 26, 57–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenblatt, M., Grosser, G. H. & Wechsler, H. (1964). Differential response of hospitalized depressed patients to somatic therapy. American Journal of Psychiatry 120, 935–943.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mantel, N. (1966). Evaluation of survival data and two new rank order statistics arising in its consideration. Cancer Chemotherapy Reports 50, 163–170.Google ScholarPubMed
Medical Research Council (1965). Clinical trial of the treatment of depressive illness. British Medical Journal, i, 881–886.Google Scholar
Turek, I. S. & Hanlon, T. (1977). The effectiveness and safety of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 164, 419–431.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Woolson, R. F., Tsuang, M. T. & Fleming, J. A. (1980). Utility of the proportional hazards model for survival analysis of psychiatric data. Journal of Chronic Diseases 33. 183–195.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed