Also referred to as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT); in use since the 1930s as a treatment for depression that consists of the application of weak electric currents to the head through electrodes. The belief is that the frontal lobe of the brain is the part most affected in depression and that, by damaging it temporarily, the depression may be eased and, with repeated treatments, cured. The patient has to be anaesthetized or have a muscle relaxant and even restrained because the shock produces convulsions. Sometimes the patient goes into a coma. There is some criticism of its widespread use because ECT can cause permanent brain damage it is unquestionably a blunt instrument especially loss of memory (it may break the link between long-term and short-term memory) and reduction of intelligence. The treatment is still used widely today, not so much as before, and now primarily for severely depressed patients and as a last resort.
Scientists do not understand how ECT works; it is therefore on the fringe of science. Brain research is still in its early stages. When more is understood, ECT may be explicable and be seen to be legitimately scientific. Alternatively, it may be discredited and dismissed as pseudoscience.