Electrosleep

“Electrosleep” refers to the technique of inducing a relaxed state by the transcranial application of a low intensity electrical current. It has been worked on in Russia for the past 20 years, and there has been marked intensification of interest in the past few years. In spite of this, there has been very little investigation of electrosleep in the United States, partly because of a traditional distrust of the use of electrical devices in psychiatry. The authors have attempted to give electrosleep a clinical trial in a university setting. A small group of outpatients with chronic anxiety and depressive symptoms and associated chronic insomnia were selected for treament. These patients were selected partly because they had been unresponsive to the standard forms of antianxiety and antidepressive therapy. They had been for the most part taking sleeping medications on a chronic basis. Most of these previously unresponsive outpatients made marked and rapid responses to brief courses of electrosleep treatment. The most striking response was the improvement in night-time insomnia. Several inpatients who were more psychotic did not respond. The initial pilot study reported here is uncontrolled and is meant to alert the psychiatric community to a relatively new area for further investigation in this hemisphere. The authors are aware that patients were subject to the possibility of a good deal of positive suggestion and further controlled studies are planned. It is to be noted that the term “electrosleep” is a misnomer as the patients do not necessarily sleep during treatment. It is also to be noted that this treatment avoids some of the features which some find esthetically objectionable in electroshock therapy, as patients with electrosleep feel no discomfort at any time, do not become unconscious at any time, and have no apparent side effects.