Antidepressant Effects of High-Dose Right Unilateral Electroconvulsive Therapy

In a random-assignment, double-blind, controlled comparison in 38 melancholic men, overall antidepressant potency of high-dose electroconvulsive therapy (378-mC charge) given with right unilateral electrode placement was not significantly different from that with bilateral placement, although there was a trend for faster improvement with bilateral ECT. The suprathreshold character of the stimulus, about 2.5 times the expected seizure threshold, may have contributed to the high efficacy of brief-pulse right unilateral electroconvulsive therapy found in this study.