Information about ECT parameters, diagnoses and main indications, gender and age is also presented. Other information such as ethnicity, education, side effects, mortality, adverse events, use of written consent, involuntary conditions has also been noted. Results Study selection The study selection process, databases searched and total numbers of

references identified (N= 1403), title and abstract screened (N= 851), full-text Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical screened (N= 101), included for data extraction (N= 70) and full text excluded (N= 31) references are given in Figure 1. Figure 1 Flow chart of study-selection process. Description of studies Overview of included studies (N= 70) and data extracted is given in Table 1, sorted according to the continents: Luminespib molecular weight Australia and New Zealand (N= 7), Africa (N= 3), North and Latin America (N= 12), Europe (N= 33), and Asia (N= 15). Each reference was categorized according to the data

presented, whether it represented the Land (n= 27), Region (n= 13), City (n= 11), or Hospital (n= 19). Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Overview of full text excluded references (N= 31) and reasons for exclusion are given in Appendix B. Five references were found not relevant in topic, 10 had no rate or prevalence data or insufficient/too sparse data, six were parallelly published in other languages Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical than English or not possible to find/full-text retrieve, and the data in nine were evaluated too old, collected before 1990. Detailed summery of findings tables of included full-text studies are presented in Appendix C, Tables C1–C5 according to the five continents:

(1) Australia and New Zealand, (2) Africa, (3) North and Latin America, (4) Europe and (5) Asia. Seven studies were included from Australia and New Zealand, including a recent one from Sydney (Lamont Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical et al. 2011). Only three of six studies from Africa were included, representing Malawi, Nigeria, and South Africa. The three excluded (Appendix B) were two from Nigeria and one from Egypt, due to data being too old (before 1990), insufficient, and sparse. One of the two included studies from Latin America, claimed representation of 17 Latin American and four Caribbean Phosphoprotein phosphatase countries, but with unstated names except for Haiti being excluded (Levav and Gonzalez 1996). Two of the 10 studies from North America represented Medicare populations (Rosenbach et al. 1997; Westphal et al. 1997) leaving many of all USA’s 50 States not represented. A study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) was found too old (Thompson et al. 1994). Altogether, 33 studies were included from Europe and nine were from the Nordic countries. Twelve identified European studies, including one study from Italy (Lucca et al. 2010), did not meet inclusion criteria (Appendix B).