Cerebral electrotherapy (GET) appears to offer a safe and comfortable method of treating a variety of conditions, principally anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Attempts to assess its therapeutic efficacy have yielded widely differing results. This may be attributable to considerable variation in the electrical characteristics of the apparatus used, the duration of the treatment, and the placement of the electrodes. In some double-blind studies, the placebo condition has differed significantly from the treatment, and in most the ideal situation with a blind machine operator, subject, and assessor, has not been achieved. Until the methodology for assessment improves and the treatment procedure is standardized, it will be impossible to determine if GET is an effective treatment, and if it is, whether its mode of action is attributable to a direct effect on the brain or to relaxation, suggestion, or tactile stimulation.Reports from Eastern Europe and particularly the Soviet Union suggest that cerebral electrotherapy (GET) or electrosleep treatment, holds considerable promise in the treatment of a variety of conditions. This review examines the methodological problems that have attended controlled studies that attempt to validate these claims. First, an overview of what the term GET implies is provided. OverviewElectrosleep, or cerebral electrotherapy (GET), is a somatic therapy characterized by the passage of a low-amplitude, pulsating direct electrical current around and through the cranium. Originally, electrosleep was intended to induce a state of natural sleep, "a state of consciousness grossly indistinguishable from ordinary sleep, produced by the direct action of a weak rhythmic current on the brain of a cooperative subject in a nondistracting environment" (Boblitt, 1969, p. 9).

This study has investigated the effects of electrosleep treatment, or cerebral electrotherapy (CET) on the symptoms of ten subjects with anxiety neurosis. A blind crossover experimental design, in which subjects received five consecutive days of active and five days of placebo treatment was employed, the order being counterbalanced. The subjects’ experience of CET, particularly with regard to cutaneous sensation, was identical for both treatment conditions. Anxiety levels were determined pre- and post-treatment using daily psychological and physiological measures. Weekly symptom measures were also obtained before and after each type of treatment and one week and four weeks after the treatment terminated. The results showed a statistically significant overall improvement in the levels of anxiety, but no difference between placebo and active treatment. Nor was there any significant difference between these two treatment conditions in their effect upon physiological measures made while treatment was in process. There was a post hoc finding of a significant correlation between the overall response to this procedure and extraversion as measured by the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI). The implications of these findings are that the therapeutic effectiveness of CET is attributable to non-specific or placebo components of the treatment, and not to the direct effects of electrical current on the brain.

No abstract