Electrical treatment of anxiety states

During the past five years a number of reports have acclaimed Subconvulsive Electrostimulation as a therapeutic measure for the relief of states of anxiety and tension. In general, these accounts have proved unconvincing, since the authors have seldom provided either controls or even details of their results. The report of Hargrove, Bennett and Ford (1953) has been the only exception to both of these criticisms—and the only adverse account. The present investigation was therefore conducted as a “blind” trial in order to provide an unbiassed evaluation of the subject. The series comprised 100 patients, half of whom received the electrical treatment while the other half were subjected to a control procedure. Objective evidence was furnished by psychometric tests. An autonomic test of reputed prognostic significance, and a follow-up study, were also included.

A small experiment in the use of acetylcholine in the treatment of neurosis

The purpose of this experiment has been, in the first place, to bring about improvement in certain patients who were responding insufficiently or not at all to psychotherapy, by the use of this drug for which claims have been made that it is of value in the therapy of some anxiety states, such as those characterized by tension; and in the second place to gain by experience an understanding of how much we are justified in expecting from its use. Within the limited series of eleven patients so far treated, results have been sufficiently encouraging to make us wish to continue.

Myanesin in psychiatry

In the course of a systematic investigation of the pharmacological properties of a-substituted glycerol ethers it was found that some of these compounds produced muscular relaxation and paralysis. In small doses, administered sub-cutaneously, muscular relaxation and a sleep-like condition were produced in laboratory animals—in larger doses there was ataxia followed by paralysis. Of the various compounds studied, mephenesin was found to be the most potent and to possess the greatest margin of safety, and it is this product which is used, for oral administration, in Myanesin Elixir.