The risk of suicide mortality was similar in patients treated with electroconvulsive therapy and matched controls, with no evidence that the therapy decreased risk of death by suicide, results of a recent study showed.
“Early studies of the impact of ECT on suicide deaths were conducted in an era during which effective psychotropic medication was limited or inaccessible to most patients,” Bradley V. Watts, MD, MPH, of the department of psychiatry at Geisel Medical School at Dartmouth College, and colleagues wrote in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. “Though these studies