Abstract

Although the introduction of antidepressive drugs has lessened the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in psychiatry, it remains the most effective treatment for severely depressed patients.¹ Since the introduction of muscle relaxants and short-acting anaesthetics the main unwanted effects of ECT have been the brief period of disorientation after the treatment, and occasionally embarrassing but usually short-lived memory disturbances. In the late fifties and early sixties it was suggested that the application of electrodes to the head over the non-dominant cerebral hemisphere instead of the more usual bitemporal placement might produce the desired therapeutic effect while minimising the unwanted disorientation and memory disturbance.