Pregnant women should consider psychotherapy as an alternative to antidepressants, but those with more severe or recurrent bouts of depression should remain on their meds during pregnancy, according to new guidelines from two big physicians’ groups. But there’s an alternative treatment for the sickest depressed women, the guidelines say: electroconvulsive therapy , often called shock therapy. ECT, which involves an electric current that induces a seizure in the brain, has been “long regarded as a safe and effective treatment for severe depression in pregnancy,” the guidelines say. It may be particularly help for for women who aren’t helped by medication, or when a disorder is life-threatening. It doesn’t appear to be harmful to either the mother-to-be or the unborn children when they are carefully monitored, according

to the guidelines. ECT should be considered more often to treat pregnant woman, Kimberly Yonkers , first author on the report and a professor at Yale University told the Health Blog. “ECT happens to be one of the most effective treatments we have in our treatment armamentarium,” she said. “ECT is safe, it’s fast and it’s not contraindicated in pregnancy.” But ECT suffers from the problem of public perception, says Yonkers. “That is the real drawback.” Recipients also experience what is supposed to be short-term memory impairment, but which some patients say is much longer lasting than expected. For more on the guidelines, see this morning’s WSJ . Image: iStockphoto

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Antidepressant Alternative for Pregnant Women: Shock Therapy