Electroconvulsive therapy

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a brain stimulation therapy. It uses a mild electrical current to produce a brief seizure. Electrical stimulation causes chemical changes in the part of your brain that regulates mood and emotion.

At Penn Medicine’s Princeton House Behavorial Health, we offer this advanced treatment as a safe and effective way to find rapid relief from severe depression and some other mental health disorders. With our help, you can enjoy life again.

ECT may be right for people whose depression hasn’t improved after trying at least two antidepressant medications.

We may recommend ECT if you’re unable to perform daily activities, have episodes of psychosis, or are suicidal. In some cases, people with bipolar disorder or catatonia may also benefit from ECT. We offer ECT to people in our inpatient or outpatient treatment programs. 

In addition to providing relief from symptoms, ECT can reduce:

• Cost of medications
• Lost work time
• Risk of hospitalization
• Side effects from multiple medications

Before ECT, we do a complete psychiatric assessment and physical exam to make sure you’re healthy enough for treatment. You may need blood tests or an electrocardiogram (ECG), a test to check your heartbeat.

During treatment:

1. You receive a muscle relaxant and general anesthesia, so you’re asleep and don’t feel pain.
2. We attach electrodes to your scalp, either on the right side of your head or on both sides of your head.
3. Your care team checks your heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, and brain activity throughout the treatment.
4. The psychiatrist delivers a series of short electrical pulses that produce a seizure. The seizure usually lasts less than a minute.
5. You wake up a few minutes after the treatment. We will move you to our recovery area and monitor you for about 30 minutes.

Most people need six to 12 treatments, three days per week. You may need more or fewer treatments depending on your unique situation.

ECT is a reliable and relatively low-risk treatment that can have life-changing results. At Princeton House, we follow rigorous safety standards when delivering ECT, including:

• Unilateral ECT: Whenever possible, we place electrodes on the right side of your head instead of both sides of your head. This reduces the risk of side effects such as memory loss.
• Individualized dosing: We carefully determine the right level of electrical stimulation for your needs. We start by delivering the lowest possible dose and evaluate the effects before increasing your treatment intensity.
• Ultrabrief pulse stimulation: We deliver stimulation in short, frequent pulses. Compared to older ECT methods that delivered a continual current, research shows this new approach is more effective and less likely to cause problems with thinking and memory.