Electroconvulsive Therapy-Related Anxiety: A Survey in an Academic Hospital in the North of Iran

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a medical treatment most commonly used in the most severe psychiatric diseases; however due to unreal anxiety, it is not widely accepted by patients and their families.

The present study aimed to investigate the main causes of ECT-related anxiety (ERA) in an academic hospital in the north of Iran.

In this study, the participants were hospitalized psychiatric patients with proper communication skills. A 12-item questionnaire encompassing four sections (namely ECT side-effects, procedure factors, medical team communication, and familial, social, and economic factors) were filled out by a responsible psychiatric resident through a face-to-face interview. The participants’ demographic information, including gender, age, psychiatry disorder, level of education, and history of ECT, were also recorded.

In this study, 353 cases were analyzed, amongwhom329 patients (93.2%) reported at least one item for ERA, and 143 patients (85.6 %) had the history of ECT. All the participants (100%) had no experience in this regard (P = 0.0001). The most common cause of ERA was ECT-related side effects (70.7%) such as memory impairment (60.4%), disablement (24.9%), and death (14.7%) followed by procedure factors (27.2%), general anesthesia (GA) (73.2 %), and electric current (26.8 %). A significant relationship was observed between gender and the history of ECT with the patients’ anxiety reasons (P = 0.0001); however, the other variables, including age (P = 0.72), type of disease (P = 0.144), and the level of education (P = 0.012) had no impact on the results.

In this paper, the main causes of ERA were general anesthesia, memory impairment, and electric current. Obviously, a multidisciplinary approach is required to help these patients to handle their fear and anxiety successfully.