Electroconvulsive Therapy in Switzerland: A Survey on Contemporary Practice in Remembrance of a Historical Meeting.

Objectives: The prevalence and use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) varies widely across Europe. Historically, Switzerland played an important role in the worldwide spread of ECT. Nevertheless, an overview of current ECT practice in Switzerland is still lacking.

Essentials of psychoanalytic process and change: how can we investigate the neural effects of psychodynamic psychotherapy in individualized neuro-imaging?

The paper focuses on the essentials of psychoanalytic process and change and the question of how the neural correlates and mechanisms of psychodynamic psychotherapy can be investigated. The psychoanalytic approach aims at enabling the patient to "remember, repeat, and work through" concerning explicit memory. Moreover, the relationship between analyst and patient establishes a new affective configuration which enables a reconstruction of the implicit memory.

Postictal ventricular tachycardia after electroconvulsive therapy treatment associated with a lithium-duloxetine combination.

This report addresses the dilemma of continuing lithium prophylaxis and antidepressant therapy in view of cardiovascular adverse effects under electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in patients with a long history of recurrent affective disorders. A severely depressed 48-year-old woman who had been treated with lithium for 18 years developed a ventricular tachycardia during ECT. Possible interaction with succinylcholine was taken into account, and rocuronium was used as an alternative muscle relaxant.

[OPD in the hospital: an algorithm for structuring the diagnostic process with the Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostics OPD-2].

Objectives: Operationalized psychodynamic diagnostics OPD-2 is a diagnostic procedure that has proven to be valuable for psychotherapy. However, to date there has been only little discussion about the application context and any necessary adaptations to various clinical fields.

Methods And Results: The working group "Implementation of OPD in Clinical Practice" proposes an algorithm for the sequential and adapted use of OPD depending on the clinical context.

Deliberate self-harm in female patients with affective disorders: investigation of personality structure and affect regulation by means of operationalized psychodynamic diagnostics.

This study investigated psychodynamically relevant dimensions in female depressive patients with and without deliberate self-harm (DSH). DSH is often observed in depressive patients and frequently shows a correlation with personality disorders. Forty female depressive patients with and without DSH were investigated after recovery from acute depressive pathology by means of "operationalized psychodynamic diagnostics" (OPD).

[Self-esteem and partner relationships of patients with bipolar affective disorder: a study of the interval personality with the Giessen-test].

The self-concept and the partner relationships of patients with bipolar affective disorder in remission were investigated with the Giessen-Test (GT, Beckmann et al. ) comparing the bipolar patients with unipolar depressive patients, a control group of orthopedic patients and the standard sample of the Giessen-Test. The new dimensions "self-esteem" and "near-to-object" were developed by means of the Giessen-Test items.