[Evaluation of the efficacy of electroconvulsive therapy in the treatment of delusional, congruently delusional and non-congruently delusional subtypes of unipolar affective disorders].
In this retrospective pilot study we tried to find out whether there were any differences in therapeutic response to electroconvulsive therapy in the patients with diagnosed unipolar affective disorder due to the presence and type of delusions in the clinical course of the disease. The sample consists of 45 inpatient unipolar depressives, 15 male and 30 female, divided into 3 experimental groups: nondelusional depressions, depressions with congruent delusions and depressions with incongruent delusions. Two variables were used to estimate the therapeutic response: number of received ECT treatments and proportion of full remissions. Our results showed significant differences between all the groups for both variables with the best therapeutic response in the group of incongruent delusional depressions and the worst in the group of nondelusional depressions.