Electroconvulsive therapy is an effective treatment for treatment-resistant major depression.

“Well, it turns out that this is a well-established, and in many cases, very effective treatment for major depression. Electric shock therapy is generally used for treatment-resistant depression. So these are people that have no positive response or ongoing positive response to drug therapies or other therapies. Electric shock therapy is thought to work primarily by stimulating the massive kind of indiscriminate release of things like serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine, a huge variety of neuromodulators, as well as things like BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor which then allows neuroplasticity to take place.”