Electroconvulsive Therapy

In Denmark at the Copenhagen University, a study was being performed on eight people who were sentenced to psychiatric treatment after a criminal offense, six men and two women whose ages ranged from eighteen to fifty-eight. Five patients were diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia which is a subtype of actual schizophrenia that causes the patient to have delusions. Two patients were found with Hebephrenic or Disorganized Schizophrenia that is a chronic long term illness that causes problems with speech and the thought process, and one patient was diagnosed with Schizophrenia Affective Disorder where it is a combination of symptoms such as hallucinations, mood disorders, and depression.

The study consisted of Electroconvulsive Therapy over

All patients were aggressive, restrained, self-mutilating, suicidal, depressed and they all had various types of Schizophrenia which they were continuously taking antipsychotic medications for, and for many years it did so little for the sanity they had left. After the ECT courses, the majority of the patients came back friendly, happy, calm, non-suicidal, some discharged, and willing to go for more treatments. The analysis from this study is that ECT therapy is effective and safe, and there was no report of any side effects, plus it gave relief to the people that are linked to Schizophrenia by relieving some of the symptoms. In these case, it helped enable seven out of eight patient’s progress mentally and got them back in a more stable minded state. The improvement shown in the tests states that ECT treatment should be more introduced as an adjunctive to other options of treatment. The study that was conducted is titled The use of electroconvulsive therapy in a cohort of forensic psychiatric patients with schizophrenia. The study involves the use of electroshock on patients with varying degrees of mental states. The results were both positive and

All of whom have long histories of schizophrenia and have displayed its related symptoms. The older man, patient five had suffered through thirty years of schizophrenia, along with alcohol dependence issues. His experience with electroconvulsive therapy included maintained treatments and he responded very well. His dependence on alcohol also declined. The middle aged man, patient two, had been living with schizophrenia since age twenty when he received ECT. This included maintained electroshock treatment, spanning over a year with a total 115 sessions. In the end, he was discharged to a nursing home much improved in areas of: depression, suicidal thoughts, and aggression. The younger male, patient six, reportedly experienced relief of his hallucinations and screaming fits. He however refused to continue with ECT, believing it would kill him. The thirty-two year old male, patient eight, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia at age nineteen. He was exposed to 22 sessions of electro-therapy, and afterwards the study reports that he was nice, and had a sense of humor. Patient number four started showing signs of schizophrenia at age twenty-two, with continuous psychotic symptoms. Receiving the twenty sessions of electroshock therapy significantly improved her condition. She was eventually discharged to a nursing