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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

ECT in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Ect in child and adolescent psychiatry

ECT appears to be highly effective and safe for severe psychiatric illness in children, adolescents, and young adults, but access remains limited by legal, institutional, and clinician-related barriers.

The aim is to provide an overview of ECT use in children, adolescents, and young adults under the age of 21, including those with developmental disorders (DD) such as autism, intellectual disability, and genetic syndromes; the review covers the history of its use from 1942 to 2026, utilization trends, effectiveness, safety, and barriers to access. The method involves reviewing selected findings from the published literature and unpublished data. Children and adolescents account for a small proportion of all patients receiving ECT; the literature consists predominantly of case reports and case series, with relatively few controlled or prospective studies. Nevertheless, published outcomes consistently indicate high effectiveness, and most reports describe marked clinical improvement in severe, treatment-resistant psychiatric disorders; the safety profile is also favorable when the risks of ECT are compared with those of severe, untreated illness, and no deaths attributable to ECT have been reported in this population despite the high severity of patients' acute illness. The main barriers to access include restrictive state regulations, requirements for multiple psychiatric evaluations, clinicians' limited experience with ECT in young people, inadequate training opportunities, persistent misconceptions about side effects, and a lack of ECT services that accept young patients. In conclusion, despite more than eighty years of clinical use, access continues to be limited by legal, institutional, and provider-related barriers.

All WCP 2026 summaries