Maintenance Electroconvulsive Therapy in a Patient with Treatment-Resistant Paranoid Schizophrenia and Comorbid Epilepsy

The treatment of choice for acute schizophrenia is antipsychotic drug treatment and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and should only be considered as an option for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, where treatment with clozapine has already proven ineffective or intolerable. The use of ECT as a main...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Beppe Micallef-Trigona, Joseph Spiteri
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2012-01-01
Series:Case Reports in Psychiatry
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/374752
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Summary:The treatment of choice for acute schizophrenia is antipsychotic drug treatment and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and should only be considered as an option for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, where treatment with clozapine has already proven ineffective or intolerable. The use of ECT as a maintenance treatment for patients with schizophrenia and comorbid epilepsy is uncommon as scant evidence exists to support this. We describe a patient with a serious case of paranoid schizophrenia and comorbid epilepsy who had not responded to typical and atypical antipsychotic medication, but responded remarkably to acute ECT and required maintenance ECT to sustain a positive therapeutic response.
ISSN:2090-682X
2090-6838