Abstract
Biological methods are a very important part of mental disorders treatment, together with pharmacotherapy. The relative failures of current psychopharmacological treatment modalities could also be a reason for their growing popularity.
Some of them are available and applicable without complicated technical equipment (sleep deprivation, phototherapy, physical exercise), while others require expensive and complex technical equipment and staff training (electroconvulsive therapy, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation) or costly equipment and surgery (Nervus vagus stimulation, deep brain stimulation). A series of these techniques are intensively studied and improved in order to become usable in everyday practice and to offer an additional treatment modality for patients suffering from various types of mental disorders.