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The Public's Role in the Evaluation of Health Care Technology: The Conflict Over ECT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2009

Elizabeth Heitman
Elizabeth Heitman
Affiliation:
The University of Texas-Houston School of Public Health
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Abstract

The use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), controversial since its inception, offers an instructive case study on the challenge of addressing patients' perspectives in the evaluation of health care technology. Despite widespread professional acceptance of ECT, groups of former psychiatric patients have worked through the U.S. legal system to restrict and even ban ECT in the treatment of mental illness. This unusual lay participation in the regulation of health care illustrates how differing conceptions of evidence can affect the evaluation of technology. ECT provides a powerful example of the value of a more complex definition of the significant outcomes of treatment and the growing practice of outcomes assessment, especially as such research is used to shape health policy.

Type
Special Section: The Assessment of Psychiatry
Information
International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , Fall 1996 , pp. 657 - 672
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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