Letter: Shock treatment: fears and facts

Sir: The reporting of medical malpractice is a necessary contribution to public knowledge and Sharon Kingman's account of the alleged use of unmodified ECT (electric shock treatment) in Broadmoor Special Hospital (7 December) is no exception to this.

Unfortunately her story also contributes to the negative public image attached to ECT therapy. Although of little sensational news value, it is a fact that this treatment is daily used to bring relief to those patients whose severe biological depression is resistant to drug treatment or where very rapid improvement is vital, as in actively suicidal patients. It is performed only under general anaesthetic and side-effects are transitory and generally well tolerated.

While it is all too true that many find the idea of ECT frightening - and the media could help redress this balance - patients' actual experience of it is rather different. Freeman and Kendall's survey in 1980 of 166 patients having ECT found that after treatment 50 per cent felt that a visit to the dentist was more frightening.

Yours etc,

ALAN MOORE

Senior Registrar in Psychiatry

St Martin's Hospital

Bath