Books on ECT

Dukakis K & Tye Larry. 2006. Shock: The healing power of electroconvulsive therapy. Hardcover, Avery, 304 p, ISBN 9781583332658

Kitty Dukakis, the wife of former Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, is a well-known and much-loved public figure. She revealed her ongoing struggle to overcome depression and her accompanying addictions to alcohol and pills in her 1990 memoir, Now You Know. In Shock, she describes her experience with ECT.

Tomruk NB et al. 2007. ECT: Manual for Clinical Practice. Bakirköy Research and Training Hospital for Psychiatry, Neurology and Neurosurgery. Ece Matabaacilik, Istanbul, Turkey. 

This handbook is a part of the reorganisation process of ECT services in Turkey to establish the routine administration of modified ECT. Following the establishment of an ECT Centre in the auspices of Bakirköy Research and Training Hospital for Psychiatry, Neurology and Neurosurgery in November 2005, a team was formed to organise modified ECT services. The team acted as a Technical Committee and developed technical and managerial guidelines to standardize the services in the hospital. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health in its aim to standardize the national ECT services has commissioned our hospital as a Centre of Excellence to provide training to practitioners from all psychiatry hospitals/departments. The routine ECT training of the Centre is a 5 day programme including practical administration. Besides this, on-site trainings are also conducted at other psychiatry hospitals / departments. The Handbook has been developed during this process to support the training programmes and to set standards. It has been reviewed and approved by the MoH and distributed to all psychiatry units countrywide. All these efforts are aiming to ensure the use of modified ECT nationwide and support good clinical practice.

Shorter E & Healy D. 2007. Shock Therapy: A History of Electroconvulsive Treatment in Mental Illness. Rutgers University Press, 384 p, ISBN 978-0-8135-4169-3

Swartz CM (ed.). 2009. Electroconvulsive and neuromodulation therapies. Cambridge University Press. Hardcover, 609 p, ISBN 978-0-521-88388-7

A comprehensive textbook, gathering chapters written by leading scholars and clinician in the field. Several chapters are written by EFFECT-members (Benbow, Bolwig; Gazdag, Nikolaus, Sienaert, van den Broek). A must have.