The 10 Year Health Plan establishes NICE at the centre of NHS recovery. One of the priority projects for NICE to implement the 10 Year Health Plan is taking a whole lifecycle approach to developing guidance to improve population health for every NHS pound. NICE is committed to being agile and responsive to evolving evidence and health system needs, to produce and maintain guidance that is useful and useable while ensuring value for the taxpayer.

One of the aims of the whole life cycle approach is to deliver ‘integrated guidance’ to improve clinical decision pathways, to ensure recommendations are up to date, related guidance content is incorporated into guidelines, and withdrawing duplicated, outdated or non-system priority content. In order to deliver this vision, we are considering withdrawing NICE technology appraisal (TA) content where it fits within our principles as stated in section 8.2.19 of the NICE health technology evaluations manual or in cases where recommendations from a TA will be fully or partially incorporated into NICE guidelines and the TA is judged to no longer be needed or become redundant.

TA withdrawal proposal

We propose that TA59 is withdrawn and recommendations for the use of ECT are moved to the relevant condition guidelines as was done for the recommendations on ECT use in the NICE guideline on depression (NG222).   

• New evidence indicates that the recommendations in TA59 on the use of ECT in schizophrenia could be updated in the NICE guideline on psychosis and schizophrenia (CG178). 
• New evidence supports the existing recommendations in TA59 for bipolar disease. The recommendations will be incorporated in the NICE guideline on bipolar (CG185). 
• New evidence supports the existing recommendations in TA59 for catatonia. The recommendations will be withdrawn. 

How to comment

Please read the consultation document before making any comments.

We have a new way of making comments on this consultation. You must make your comments directly onto the online version of the consultation document. When you go into the document you will find instructions on how to use the new commenting software. You can also review and edit your comments before you submit them.

You can download a PDF version of the consultation document, but you can only make comments on the online version.

If you wish to comment on this consultation, please create and activate a NICE Account first at https://accounts.nice.org.uk/register    

You can then sign into the Consultation area via the Draft guidance (online commenting) link below.

Consultation document

• Draft consultation document (online commenting)
• Supporting documentation (downloadable version)

Closing date for comments: Tuesday 16^th December 2025 at 5pm

Note that the provisional review decision presented here does not constitute NICE's formal decision on this guideline. The decision is provisional and may change after consultation.

About the consultation

We have asked some questions about the consultation that we would like you to answer. You will be able to see the questions when you go into the online consultation document.  

We would also like you to think about whether there are any aspects of the recommendations that need particular consideration to make sure we avoid unlawful discrimination against any group of people. For example, on the grounds of:

• race
• gender
• disability
• religion or belief
• sexual orientation
• age
• gender reassignment
• pregnancy and maternity