# The Positive Impact of Electroconvulsive Therapy for Severe Psychiatric Illness

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/advances-in-care-6039100/the-positive-impact-of-electroconvulsive-therapy-for-severe-psychiatric-illness
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/advances-in-care-6039100/the-positive-impact-of-electroconvulsive-therapy-for-severe-psychiatric-illness.md
Podcast: [Advances in Care](https://stenobird.com/podcast/advances-in-care-6039100)
Published: 2026-06-25T09:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://advances-in-care.simplecast.com/episodes/the-positive-impact-of-electroconvulsive-therapy-for-severe-psychiatric-illness-ZuSZ9Io1
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Duration seconds: 974

## Resource

On this episode of Advances in Care, Dr. Leonardo Lopez, a psychiatrist at NewYork-Presbyterian and vice chair for inpatient services in the Department of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, joins Erin Welsh to discuss a transformative but widely inaccessible psychiatric treatment: electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Dr. Lopez describes the history of the treatment, how it has evolved since its inception to become one of the safest procedures done under general anesthesia, and the dramatic response rates. He also shares the transformative story of a pediatric patient with catatonia whose syndrome resolved after a 6-week ECT treatment plan allowing her to return to normal life activities. Despite the positive responses, ECT has carried a stigma born of its early practices and portrayals in media however, the modern version of this therapy is less than 5 minutes and is administered while patients are under general anesthesia, resulting in some of the fastest-acting psychiatric treatments for certain conditions, with minimal side effects.

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## Transcript

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