Lakshimi Borgohain1, Deepak Chaudhury2, Mahibul Islam Mollah3, Subhankar Paul4
BACKGROUND
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) among adolescent psychiatric patient is rarely used and studies in this regard are also rare, while its need is of great importance.
Aim of this study was to study the prevalence of ECT in common psychiatric illnesses among adolescent age group, where it is indicated and outcome of ECT in those psychiatric patients.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
All data were collected retrospectively from the chart review for those adolescents aged between 12 to 18 years who received ECT during the period of 2008 - 2012. During the study period a total of 554 patients received ECT, among whom 104 were adolescents.
RESULTS
Adolescent patients were 18.77% in the whole ECT sample; the average age of the adolescents was 16.33 years and number of patients were more with older age. Among all the patients, 48.08% had positive family history of mental illness and 81.73% were from lower Socioeconomic Class. The use of ECT was more with schizophrenia (n= 63, 60.57%) and acute and transient psychotic disorder (n= 30, 28.85%). The most common indication was agitation and aggression (n= 29, 27.88%) followed by poor medication response (n= 19, 18.27%). Good response is found in most of the cases (n= 88, 84.62%), only a few percentage of cases showed minor and transient adverse event.
CONCLUSION
The result of our study suggests that prevalence of ECT among adolescent psychiatric patients is quite high and ECT is a safe and effective method of treatment in the adolescent psychiatric patients, especially those patients who are severely ill and poorly responding to medication.
