How artificial intelligence detects lowered mood, why depression is linked to heart-disease risk, and other highlights.
Although often maligned as too invasive, electroconvulsive therapy is an important bulwark against suicide in people who are severely depressed, according to researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada. When people with severe depression received ECT, their risk of dying by suicide decreased over a 12-month period.
In the study, the researchers analysed health data from people with depression who had been admitted to psychiatric hospitals in the province of Ontario, Canada — a total of more than 67,000 participants, about 5,000 of whom were prescribed ECT following their admission. Within one year of their hospital discharge, people who received ECT were about half as likely to die by suicide as were those who did not receive ECT — a risk reduction similar to that seen in people on lithium treatment. In addition, those who received ECT in the study were 25% less likely than their untreated counterparts to die of any cause during the same time period.
As the researchers acknowledge, ECT can cause significant side effects, including memory loss and problems with cognition. Yet they see their study as proof of ECT’s continued usefulness in people who are severely depressed, arguing that its life-saving effects should not be discounted.
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