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This study aims to explore medical students’ attitudes to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). The authors sought to determine correlates of baseline attitudes to ECT and whether specific forms of ECT teaching improved attitudes to ECT during students’ psychiatry placement.

At the beginning of their placement, fourth-year medical students completed a questionnaire capturing background information and baseline attitudes. A second questionnaire, in the second half of the placement, recorded educational and clinical experience gained on ECT during placement, in addition to attitudes at this timepoint. The authors measured attitude using a five-point Likert scale and defined a positive shift in attitude as an improvement of ≥ 1 point between the two time points.

At Timepoint 1, 66% reported a positive attitude to ECT. This was associated with having attended a lecture and with having read a professional article on ECT at some time before the psychiatry placement. Attitudes significantly improved during the placement (66% vs 95% positive). Students who attended a lecture on ECT were more likely to have a positive shift in attitude, as were students who experienced three or more teaching modalities.

Personal, social and medical problems arise from treatment-resistant psychiatric disorders. ECT is a safe and effective treatment for such disorders.

It is hoped that this study will contribute to the development of medical education, so that lectures on ECT, and three or more teaching modalities, are incorporated into the undergraduate medical curriculum.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the changes of brain functional network after electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) treatment in major depressive disorder (MDD).

In this study, resting electroencephalography (EEG) is used to explore the changes in spectral power density, functional connectivity and network topology elicited by an acute open-label course of ECT in a group of 19 MDD subjects. The brain functional network based on Pearson correlation is constructed in a continuous threshold space (0.38–0.59). Complex network theory is used to analyze the network characteristic such as the length of the characteristic path, clustering coefficient, degree, betweenness centrality, global efficiency and small-world architecture.

The results show that ECT increased the spectral power density of Delta, Theta and Alpha1 bands and the full frequency. ECT increases the functional connectivity in Delta and full frequency and reduces the functional connectivity in Alpha2 band. In the selected threshold space, the clustering coefficient, global efficiency and small-world attributes of the network are changed significantly after ECT.

The findings indicate that resting EEG could effectively characterize the changes of brain functional networks following ECT in MDD. The results provide a theoretical basis to explore the neurophysiological mechanism of ECT in the field of MDD treatment.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of the planned pre-electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) family teaching on depression, anxiety and stress of caregivers of patients with mental disorders receiving ECT.

In this quasi-experimental study, 130 participants were randomized allocated into intervention or control groups. The planned family teaching program consisted of four 90 min sessions held during four weeks. Assessments occurred at pre-intervention (one week before the first session), and post-intervention (one months after the four session). Data were collected using demographic questionnaire and Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21). Mean comparisons were performed using Student’s t-test while effect sizes were estimated by Cohen’s d coefficient. The significance level was considered less than 0.05.

The mean scores of the depression, anxiety and stress levels in the intervention group were significantly reduced compared to the control group (p=0.001).

The family pre-ECT teaching intervention and counseling decreased the depression, anxiety and stress level of family caregivers of patients with mental disorders receiving ECT and the maintenance of other favorable conditions at baseline. These results suggest that even a short-term educational intervention for family members of patients received ECT can improve emotional outcomes of treatment in the family.

Considers whether hypnotherapy offers a motivating supplement to mainstream dietary management, given that insufficient perseverance undermines the response of many obese patients to conventional dieting. Investigates hypnotherapy as a supplement to conventional diet therapy in eight obese patients recruited from a general practice. After instituting dietary weight reduction, hypnotherapy (post‐hypnotic suggestion, ego‐enhancing instructions and mental imagery) was carried out on a two‐to‐three weekly basis for up to 20 sessions. All patients experienced significant weight loss, but follow‐up two years later indicated partial relapse in most patients. Concludes that, while combined dietetic and hypnotherapy management are of short‐term value, this may only be sustainable by a strategy of long‐term maintenance.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce neurological networks as a new metaphor for industrial networks. It also discusses a dysfunction of neurological networks, called writer's block, and compares the disease and potential cures with parallel issues in business networks. The issues raised should alert managers to the disabling effects of anxiety and stress on the functioning of the neurological network of creative individuals.

The paper is a conceptual contribution based on a literature study and empirical observations by the author.

The paper highlights some parallels between the two different networks, because of their functions as communication and interactive systems. Insights are offered into the way current challenges in networks may be solved strategically. The paper also presents some observations on research in the field of business marketing and business networking in general.

Problems in networks may not be solved by pressing on with existing routines. Managers may better think in terms of cures for structural problems. Also, blockage of a network may occur due to pressures and not due to competence problems. Thus, practitioners may rethink their network strategies.

A new metaphor for business networks is introduced by discussing neurological networks, their potential failure and potential cures. New views on strategy are suggested.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is effective in the treatment of treatment-resistant major depression. The fear of cognitive impairment after ECT often deters patients from choosing this treatment option. There is little reliable information regarding the effects of ECT on overall cognitive performance, while short-term memory deficits are well known but not easy to measure within clinical routines. In this pilot study, we examined ECT recipients' pre- and post-treatment performances on a digital ascending number tapping test. We found that cognitive performance measures exhibited good reproducibility in individual patients and that ECT did not significantly alter cognitive performance up to 2 hours after this therapy was applied. Our results can help patients and physicians make decisions regarding the administration of ECT. Digital measurements are recommended, especially when screening for the most common side effects on cognitive performance and short-term memory.

When a term can be represented by an acronym, searches using both controlled terms and free text terms do not always retrieve all relevant items. It is necessary to add the acronym to the search strategy to ensure full coverage. Considerable differences exist between databases and searchers should evaluate the percentage of extra items that this technique will retrieve in the databases that they habitually use.

Some patients with severe mental disorders are refractory to psychotherapeutic or psychopharmacological interventions. We describe a patient with severe symptoms from the age of 16 to 44. Her illness is best described as a schizo-affective disorder. Several series of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) followed by maintenance once a week for more than six years has kept her out of hospital beds for three years. The patient demonstrates the feasibility of long term ECT and the absence of disturbing cognitive reductions.

This article presents a typology of the medicated self, as developed through in-depth interviews with twenty-two social work students and practitioners. Utilizing an interactionist perspective, the experience of taking psychiatric medication is examined in both samples, using a comparative analysis. Emphasis is placed on the impact of taking psychiatric medication on the sense of self. The data suggest that the development of a medicated self is complex and varied, and includes a small number of those who feel that medication led to an improved self, and the majority who felt damaged by their experience with medication, and expressed varying degrees of ambivalence about its use. Despite this ambivalence, most of our respondents seemed to develop an altruistic, empathetic self geared toward helping others. This self emerged in spite of respondents saying that their self was damaged. Implications are presented, and conclusions and suggestions for further work on the impact of psychiatric medication use on the self are presented.

Prediction of increased risk of suicide is difficult. We had the opportunity to follow up 20 patients receiving electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) because of severe depression. They filled in the Antonovsky sense of coherence test (SOC) and Beck depression inventory (BDI) before and after a series of ECT treatments. Seventeen surviving patients had a mean observation time of 20.6 months, whereas the three deceased patients had 11.3 months. There was a lower mean age at onset of illness and a longer mean duration of disease in the deceased. Other clinical parameters did not differ. The surviving patients had a significant decrease on the BDI from 35 to 18 (P<0.001) and an increase on the SOC test after ECT from 2.45 to 3.19 (P<0.001), indicating both less depression and better functioning in life. The deceased had a larger change on the BDI from 32 to 13, not attaining significance because of the low number of deceased. The SOC test, however, did not increase to a purported normal level; that is, from 2.43 to 2.87. Although the SOC scale has been shown to predict mortality in substance abusers, the SOC test has not been part of earlier reviews of predictive power. Tentatively, a low pathological score on the SOC test may indicate low sense of coherence in life that might increase the propensity for suicide. These preliminary results need replication in larger studies.