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Query: UMLS:C0011570 (depression)
 172,036 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The unilateral and bilateral therapy differ in psycho-organic effects but have the same antidepressive efficiency. This is due to the facts that the organic effects are mainly caused by the electrical current whereas the antidepressive effect is dependent on the seizure activity. Compared to the bilateral treatment, unilateral gives reduced confusion, anterograde and retrograde amnesia as well as reduced experience of memory impairment. The difference is explained by a lower density of current in the brain. The unilateral treatment should be the treatment to be chosen. The antidepressive action of ECT fits the amine hypothesis, ECT causes a sustained increase of the synthesis of norepinephrine and of the sensitivity of amine receptors and creates conditions for alleviating both "low-output" and "low-sensitivity" depression. The antidepressive action is probably mediated by release of hypothalamic neurohormones.
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PMID:[Unilateral and bilateral shock therapy: mechanism of action (author's transl)]. 4 67

This study suggests that patients receiving daily doses of 40 mg of prednisone or its equivalent, are at greater risk for developing steroid psychosis. Psychotic reactions were twice as likely to occur during the first 5 days of treatment as subsequently. Premorbid personality, history of previous psychiatric disorder, and a history of previous steroid psychosis did not clearly increase the patient's risk of developing psychotic reaction during any given course of therapy. Steroid psychoses present as spectrum psychoses with symptoms ranging from affective through schizophreniform to those of an organic brain syndrome. No characteristic stable presentation was observed in these 14 cases reported here. The most prominent symptom constellation to appear some time during the course of the illness consisted of emotional lability, anxiety, distractibility, pressured speech, sensory flooding, insomnia, depression, perplexity, agitation, auditory and visual hallucinations, intermittent memory impairment, mutism, disturbances of body image, delusions, apathy, and hypomania. Phenothiazines administered in average daily doses of 212 mg produced excellent response in all patients studied. Of particular note was the fact that tricyclic antidepressants produced an exacerbation or worsening of the clinical state in all patients to whom they were administered.
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PMID:Presentation of the steroid psychoses. 43 94

Recent research indicates a possible cholinergic involvement in memory processes and thus the possibility that acetylcholine deficiency may underlie memory impairment in senile dementia. Deanol (2-dimethylaminoethanol), which is assumed to increase brain acetylcholine, was given openly for 4 weeks to 14 senile outpatients, to determine the safety of the drug and whether or not it reduces cognitive impairment. The dosage was gradually increased to 600 mg three times daily during the first two weeks, with no adverse effects. Ten patients improved globally and 4 were unchanged (p less than .01). The total score on the Sandoz Clinical Assessment-Geriatric (SCAG) was lowered by the third week (p less than .01), primarily as a result of reduced depression, irritability and anxiety, and increased motivation-initiative. However, neither the clinical ratings nor an extensive pre- versus post-treatment series of cognitive tests revealed changes in memory or other cognitive functions. Since a similar separate study with a different compound produced no behavioral changes, it is unlikely that the improvement with deanol was due entirely to placebo effects. The results thus suggest that although deanol may not improve memory, it may produce positive behavioral changes in some senile patients.
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PMID:Senile dementia: treatment with deanol. 86 68

The influence of age and number of treatments on memory impairment was studied in depressed patients after a series of convulsive treatments: bilateral ECT, unilateral ECT on the nondominant hemisphere, and fluorothyl convulsive therapy. Before and after the completed convulsive therapy course the patients were tested with a memory test battery and the symptoms rated with a depression scale. Before treatment older age-groups had decreased ability to learn, but their post-treatment forgetting score was not significantly higher than in other age-groups. An increase in the number of ECTs did not seem to correlate with the degree of memory impairment. The conclusion of the present study is that age (up to 65) and the number of ECTs (up to 10) have no apparent influence on memory impairment after electroconvulsive therapy.
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PMID:Memory impairment after convulsive therapy. Influence of age and number of treatments. 88 90

The study reported comprised 104 patients with endogenous depression who were given unilateral electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). The patients were divided into two equally large groups, one receiving two and the other four treatments per week. The latter group was selected openly, while the former had been collected by a double-blind technique on a previous occasion. The severity of depression was assessed before the first treatment and on the days after the sixth and the last treatment, and at these times memory testing by WMS Forms I and II and EEG were also performed. An analysis is presented of the therapeutic effect obtained, assessed by: (1) the number of treatments applied in the two groups; (2) the reduction in the depression score; and (3) the effect achieved per treatment. In the group with frequent electrostimulation one to two addititional treatments were required, the difference being statistically significant. On the other hand, frequent stimulation tended to be more effective in terms of the reduction in the depression score. The effect per treatment was identical in the two groups. Four treatments per week did not result in a higher frequency of complications. A comparison of the five severest depressions in each of the two groups did not reveal any difference in the therapeutic effect of the two methods of treatment. It is concluded that the technique with four treatments per week instead of two offers the advantage that the duration of the treatment period is reduced by 11-12 days. As the study also revealed that the discomforts, including memory impairment, are not increased by frequent stimulation, it is recommended that unilateral ECT is administered with a frequency of four treatments per week.
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PMID:Therapeutic results in brief-interval unilateral ECT. 118 55

To clarify the role of memory impairment in the aged as a normal or psychopathological phenomenon, 153 persons 50-years-old and over with varying degrees of depression and altered brain function were compared for their complaints about memory and actual performance on a series of memory tests. It was found that while performance varied with altered brain function, complaint was related to level of depression, regardless of performance. Exaggerated memory complaint was considered one manifestation of a general pattern of discrpant reporting of symptoms by depressed persons, and apparently related to an underlying personality factor. The complaint of superiority of remote over recent memory was not substantiated empirically, but was considered part of the pattern of stereotyped language and attitudes characteristic of depressed persons.
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PMID:Memory complaint and impairment in the aged. The effect of depression and altered brain function. 120 Jul 75

Forty depressed in-patients for whom electro-convulsive therapy had been prescribed were rated before treatment on depression and anxiety scales. Side effects, post-operative agitation and retrograde memory impairment were assessed in each patient after each of several treatments. Results were compared when no tranquillizer was given and when either diazepam or haloperidol was administered intravenously immediately before the anaesthetic. It was found than when ECT was given without tranquillization, the incidence and severity of post-operative agitation and of side effects were significantly greater in those patients with a high level of anxiety before treatment. Both diazepam and haloperidol were found to be effective in subduing agitation and side effects in anxious, depressed patients, but with diazepam recovery time was longer.
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PMID:Intravenous tranquillization with ECT. 120 56

Previous results from our laboratory support the hypothesis that measurements of EEG mean integrated amplitude (MIA) are correlated with the depth of depression as assessed by a rating scale, and also with the degree of memory impairment during depression. Moreover, it could be shown that there occurs, during severe depression, a more pronounced involvement of the dominant (DH) than of the non-dominant (NDH) brain hemisphere. A similar interhemispheric difference has also been found in a previous study of visual averaged evoked responses (V.AER). A new series comprising 51 untreated depressed patients has been investigated for both MIA and V.AER to extend the previous findings. In agreement with previous results a significant negative correlation between the within patient variance (WPV) of the MIA and depression scores was found. Moreover, a statistically significant negative relationship between the amplitude of the first two V.AER and depression scores was obtained. Since DH is most important for verbal functions, it is assumed that the degree of involvement of the DH is more pronounced in retarded depressed patients with pronounced speech disturbances.
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PMID:EEG techniques in the measurement of the severity of depressive syndromes. 122 65

The connection between memory and learning with vision was investigated by studying 100 cataract operation patients, aged 71 to 76 years, 25 of them being men and 75 women. The cataract operation restored sufficient acuity of vision for reading (minimum E-test value 0.40) to 79% of the subjects. Short-term memory was studied with series of numbers, homogenic and heterogenic inhibition, and long sentences. Learning was tested with paired-associate learning and word learning. Psychological symptoms were measured on the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale and personality on the Mini-Mult MMPI. Memory and learning improved significantly when vision was normalized after the cataract operation. Poor memory and learning scores correlated with monocular vision before the operation and with defects in the field of vision, due to glaucoma and exceeding 20%, postsurgery. Monocular vision and defects in the visual field caused a continuous sense of abnormalness, which impaired old people's ability to concentrate on tasks of memory and learning. Cerebrovascular disturbances, beginning dementia, and moderate psychological symptoms obstructed memory and learning on both test rounds. Depression was the most important psychological symptom contributing to poor memory and learning scores after the cataract operation. The memory and learning defects mainly reflected disturbances in memorizing.
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PMID:Correlations of memory and learning with vision in aged patients before and after a cataract operation. 145 8

Early referral for specialist assessment is becoming more common with memory disorders and dementia: the mean Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score of new patients at our clinic rose from 18.7 to 20.7 between 1986 and 1990. The clinical diagnosis of mild to moderate dementia has been recognized to be difficult, but several studies have reported cross-sectional diagnosis. We examined the number of visits required to establish a clinical diagnosis of dementia in the first 125 patients attending a Memory Disorders Clinic who had at least two visits (six months apart) and the stability of the diagnoses. Just under half of the patients required at least two visits to establish the clinical diagnosis. The MMSE was not a good guide to the number of visits required but the diagnosis at the first visit remained stable in all patients who scored < or = 10/30. Sixteen per cent of patients interchanged between the categories of Alzheimer's, mixed and vascular dementias. Possible age-associated memory impairment progressed to dementia in six of eight cases, and depression to dementia in three cases. The diagnosis of mild to moderate dementia should not be restricted to a cross-sectional approach, but should involve serial clinical, psychological and affective assessments.
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PMID:Longitudinal diagnosis of memory disorders. 147 75


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