[Use of electroconvulsive therapy for breaking the continual course of drug-resistant affective and schizoaffective psychoses].

To break continuous psychoses, the ECT (5 to 10 sessions daily or every other day) was given to 20 patients with affective and schizoaffective psychoses, who suffered not less than 3 affective cycles a year and were resistant to the preventive therapy with lithium carbonate or carbamazepine++ on condition they were used continuously for a year. After the ECT was completed the preventive therapy carried out before was resumed. It has been discovered that the mean value of the total duration of the affective symptomatology for a year and the mean number of affective episodes seen during a year dropped considerably. Complete "breaking" of continuous psychosis with formation of a steady remission lasting not less than 5 to 6 months could be attained in 8 patients including 3 out of 8 patients with "rapid cycling" phenomena. The breaking effect of the ECT was more probable in patients with no signs of organic CNS failure, less disease standing and less period of the continuous disease proper as well as in the presence of well-defined remissions between the episodes, predominance and greater intensity of the depressive cycles as compared to the manic ones. The use of the ECT which brought about "breaking" for the time being of the circular symptomatology enabled lithium to exhibit its normothymic stabilizing activity to a greater degree as compared to carbamazepine.