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Patients' Experiences of and Attitudes to Electroconvulsive Therapy
Author(s) -
FREEMAN C. P. L.,
KENDELL R. E.
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1986.tb51268.x
Subject(s) - citation , electroconvulsive therapy , library science , annals , medicine , psychiatry , psychology , art , classics , cognition , computer science
We would like to present the results of a study that was carried out in Edinburgh, in the late 1970s. At the time it represented the first systematic attempt to assess patients’ experiences and views of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Gomez (1975) had looked at side effects but confined her questioning to a period 24 hours after the treatment? A large number of other studies had asked systematically about side effects but not about attitudes. Hillard and Folger (1 977) compared two wards, one that was a high user and one a low user of ECT.’ They confined their questioning of patients to side effects and to the use of semantic differentials such as how good, how fast acting, how strong the treatment was. However, our study had been carried out at a time when there was considerable media interest in ECT. Most of this had been critical, uninformed, and anecdotal. The authors were stimulated to carry out the study following a British Broadcasting Company television program, in which we had both taken part and which had been edited in such a way as to be highly critical of ECT. In particular, it stressed that all of the patients whom the BBC team had interviewed had dreaded ECT and feared it more than anything else they had ever experienced. Bird (1979) attempted to assess the effect this program had on patients’ attitudes,’ in a small study carried out in Bristol, United Kingdom.