{"id":300,"date":"2024-02-07T19:05:30","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T19:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oxfordhealth.nhs.uk\/ips\/?page_id=300"},"modified":"2025-09-16T16:50:58","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T15:50:58","slug":"how-effective-is-ect","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/oxfordhealth.nhs.uk\/ips\/ect\/how-effective-is-ect\/","title":{"rendered":"How effective is ECT?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Doctors treating people with ECT report that most people see an improvement in their symptoms.<\/p>\n<p>In 2018-2019, 68% of people who had been treated with ECT were \u201cmuch-improved\u201d or \u201cvery much improved\u201d at the end of treatment (1,361 courses out of a total of 2,004).<\/p>\n<p>Some of these people were reported as showing no change in their condition and for a very small number of people (1%) it was reported that their condition was worse.<\/p>\n<h2>Treating depression<\/h2>\n<p>A large body of evidence shows that ECT is more successful in treating the most severe cases of depression than any other treatments that it has been compared to. These include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Antidepressants.<\/li>\n<li>Placebos &#8211; where someone is given a substance or procedure that has no physical<br \/>\neffect to test the effectiveness of new treatments.<\/li>\n<li>Neuromodulation treatments such as Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The risk of suicide is lower in people who have ECT than in comparable people who do not.<\/p>\n<h2>Staying well<\/h2>\n<p>ECT can help people who are very unwell to get better enough to have other kinds of treatments. This can help them stay well for longer.<\/p>\n<p>Research suggests that people who have severe depression that hasn\u2019t got better with medication are much more likely to get better and stay well for longer if they have ECT.<\/p>\n<p>Of people who get better after having ECT, half of them will stay well for at least a year. This is more likely if they are given a treatment after they finish ECT, like antidepressants or lithium.<\/p>\n<p>In comparison, people with severe depression that hasn\u2019t got better after they have tried two different antidepressants have only a 5% chance of getting better and staying well for at least a year if they are given a third antidepressant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Doctors treating people with ECT report that most people see an improvement in their symptoms. In 2018-2019, 68% of people&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"parent":289,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-page-vertical-nav.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-300","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordhealth.nhs.uk\/ips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordhealth.nhs.uk\/ips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordhealth.nhs.uk\/ips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordhealth.nhs.uk\/ips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordhealth.nhs.uk\/ips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordhealth.nhs.uk\/ips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":414,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordhealth.nhs.uk\/ips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/300\/revisions\/414"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordhealth.nhs.uk\/ips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordhealth.nhs.uk\/ips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}