Shock therapy used as a treatment for depression, anxiety patients
Therapy does not appear to have effect on headaches, joint, muscle pain, study says
Researchers revealed that mild shock therapy helps in reducing depression and anxiety, yet it is not clear the extent to which it improves patients’ health or whether it can be used to treat other conditions, according to Reuters.
Cranial electrical stimulation is the name of the therapy that works by sending electric volts, equal to a nine-volt battery, to the brain through electrodes on skin. Examining 26 trials to use this therapy on patients suffering from chronic pain, researches found that it it failed to mark any change in people suffering from chronic pain like headaches or joint or muscle pain.
Researchers found “lowstrength” evidence of a modest benefit for patients of depression and anxiety.
“If there is a benefit, it is probably not on average a large benefit, because when a treatment has an average benefit that is large this is usually pretty obvious even from a small number of studies or even studies of a small number of patients,” Paul Shekelle, lead study author and a professor of the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Centre told Reuters.
“But the benefit of cranial electrical stimulation does not have to be large for it to still be a useful additional option for treatment of these conditions, because for most of them we don’t have large benefit treatment options,” he added to Reuters.