Electroconvulsive therapy : issues for mental health nurses to consider

This column emerges from an awareness that many mental health nurses are involved with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) directly, or indirectly, with patients who have experienced ECT recently or in the past. From the nursing literature it is unclear how well informed RNs are about the advantages and disadvantages—from patients’ perspectives—of undergoing ECT in comparison to other options. Rationales for ECT, effectiveness evidence, limitations of that evidence, memory impairment—recent research and patient concerns, and the roles of RNs before and after treatment are set out below.