TMS News

A non-drug therapy used to treat anxiety and depression has been proven to be beneficial, doctors and patients say – but for Nova Scotian Susan Wood, getting that help was a significant challenge.

Wood‘s depression left her in a state she describes as “absolute exhaustion,” in which she estimates that she was functioning at 40 per cent of her normal level.

“[It] took a great amount of effort just to get two feet on the floor and move forward with each little step in the day,” Wood said in an interview.

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Gary Smith was just 17 when he started experiencing feelings of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety. Looking back he puts his low self-esteem and mental health problem to abuse first from a family friend when he was just a toddler and then later as a teenager by a man he worked for.

To cope with the PTSD symptoms in his late teens, Gary smoked marijuana and later started abusing ecstasy, amphetamines, cocaine and alcohol regularly on the weekends, to the point where he would often black out.

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What is transcranial magnetic stimulation, and how does it work? Is it effective for treating depression?

Transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, is a procedure that uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in the brain. It’s a noninvasive procedure that usually requires about 25 to 30 treatment sessions. Transcranial magnetic stimulation has been shown to effectively improve symptoms of depression, particularly in people who haven’t seen improvement with other treatments, such as antidepressant medications and psychotherapy.

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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new magnetic stimulation device that is designed to treat patients with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder (MDD) in just 3 minutes.

The Express Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) device, from MagVenture, has been approved by the FDA—expediting the treatment session speed set only by the company’s preceding TMS device when it was first cleared in 2008. What was once a treatment regimen that required patients with MDD to undergo a 30-minute-plus session 20-30 times, is now capable of being completed in just 3 minutes per session.

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Open-label transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) reduced suicidal ideation in adolescents with treatment-resistant depression, according to the results of a study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

Suicide is a leading cause of death among adolescents worldwide.

In the United States, nearly 20% of adolescents [KL1] consider suicide, 15% have formulated plans for suicide, and almost 10% attempt suicide annually. Despite efforts to reduce suicide, the rate of suicide attempts and successful suicide continues to increase in the United States. Early attempts also predict similar behavior in adulthood.

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ORANGE, Calif. - For about 30 percent of adults with major depression, simply taking medications isn't effective enough. This group has what doctors call "treatment-resistant" depression and finding relief can often be frustrating.

But there are new alternatives that don't involve medication at all, neuro-stimulators that prod certain parts of the brain to work.

Carolyn Radillo has been fighting treatment-resistant depression since she was a teenager. She's tried therapy, many medications and has been hospitalized four times without much relief.

Her doctor told her about a new treatment and she was open to trying it.

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If you follow neuroscience and neuroengineering, it’s hard to ignore the offerings of cutting-edge research seeming to reanimate an antediluvian procedure of pelting the brain with electricity. Today’s more modern and civilized brain zapping is less invasive, more controlled and uses various levels of direct and alternating electrical currents to repair and augment a panoply of different cognitive functions. Results range from relieving severe, treatment-resistant depression, jumpstarting vocabulary recall, enhancing math skills, boosting self-control, fortifying the aging brain as well as reducing the intention to commit violent acts and sexual assault.

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The effect of an acute course of high-frequency repetitive Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) on suicidal ideation in adolescents was examined in this exploratory study. Researchers obtained data from 3 prior protocols providing a 30-session course of open-label TMS treatment for adolescents with treatment-resistant depression . . . Findings revealed that in adolescents, open-label TMS alleviated suicidal ideation through the treatment and improvement of depressive symptom severity.

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The National Institutes of Health reports that about 30 percent of adults with major depression don’t respond to treatment.

But those people have an alternative that doesn’t involve medication and is non-invasive. There are a new generation of neurostimulators, which prod certain parts of the brain to work.

Carolyn Radillo has been fighting treatment-resistant depression since she was a teenager. She’s had lots of therapy, many medications and has been hospitalized four times without much relief.
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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Major depression is one of the most common medical disorders in the United States. Unfortunately, many people go untreated or have trouble finding medications that work. But there's a newer treatment that's literally tapping into a patient's brain to ease the depression without serious side effects.

This treatment, known as transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, changed a Florida mom's life. We'll call her "Gina" because she doesn't want to reveal her identity due to the stigma associated with depression. However, she does want everyone to know her story in hopes of helping save someone else.

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Sessions of magnetic brain stimulation therapy lasting just over three minutes significantly reduce depression symptoms in patients with treatment-resistant depression. That’s according to the largest study of its kind comparing a standard form of brain stimulation with a newer, shorter version that could potentially treat a larger percentage of depression patients.

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It’s every psychiatrist’s dilemma: Two patients sit in front of you, displaying the same symptoms and the same diagnosis. After going through the same treatment, one recovers and one doesn’t. What’s the difference?

It very well could be inside the brain itself. Scientists have learned a lot about the brain in the last few decades, but mental illnesses are still diagnosed based on symptoms—the visible tips of a tower hidden in fog. But for each person a different part of the tower may be broken.

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According to the latest estimates, more than 300 million people worldwide are living with depression. Medication and talk therapy are effective treatments for most patients— but not all.

If first-line treatments don't work, some people with depression turn to brain stimulation therapies. One such treatment is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which uses a pulsed magnetic field to stimulate nerve cells — or neurons — in the regions of the brain that regulate mood. When stimulated, the neurons release neurotransmitters like serotonin, which are otherwise depleted in people with depression.

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A specific kind of brain stimulation may be effective in reducing suicidal thinking in people with hard-to-treat depression, as well as other mental illnesses, according to a study. Forty per cent of people in the study, published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, reported that they no longer experienced suicidal thoughts after receiving bilateral repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS).

"This is one of the first large studies showing rTMS is effective in treating suicidal ideation," said Jeff Daskalakis from Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Canada. "The effects on suicidal ideation were independent of effects on depressive symptom."

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Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) may help improve refractory depression in patients with borderline personality disorder, according to research presented at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting.

“Borderline personality disorder patients have a high lifetime prevalence of major depressive disorder,” wrote poster presenter Hyewon Helen Lee, MD, in an abstract presented May 7. “However, it has been previously found that there are poorer outcomes of electroconvulsive therapy and antidepressants among this population.”​

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Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) may help improve refractory depression in patients with borderline personality disorder, according to research presented at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting.

A specific type of non-invasive brain stimulation, known as rTMS (repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation), can reduce suicidal thinking in a significant portion of people with hard-to-treat depression, according to a new study published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

In fact, 40 percent of the study participants who underwent bilateral rTMS reported that they were no longer experiencing suicidal thoughts. The brain stimulation works by directing magnetic pulses at targeted areas of the brain.

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Intermittent theta burst stimulation, a shorter version of the 37-minute repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation that can be delivered in 3 minutes, was noninferior to the longer version for treatment-resistant depression, findings published in The Lancet revealed.

“Several pilot trials and two meta-analyses indicate that [intermittent theta burst stimulation] is superior to sham treatment for treatment-resistant depression. However, the key practical question is whether [intermittent theta burst stimulation] performs comparably to the existing standard of care,” Daniel M. Blumberger, MD,of the department of psychiatry, University of Toronto, and colleagues wrote.

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A study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders demonstrated the cognitive safety of H1-coil transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) treatment for individuals with bipolar depression.

The exploratory study sought to evaluate the effects of H1-coil TMS treatment on 6 cognitive domains (attention and processing speed, inhibitory control, working memory and executive function, language, immediate verbal memory, and long-term verbal memory) in subjects with bipolar depression.

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TORONTO, April 26, 2018 – In the largest study of its kind, a three-minute version of a brain stimulation treatment was shown to be just as effective as the standard 37-minute version for hard-to-treat depression.

These results were published in a new Canadian study in The Lancet co-led by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and the University Health Network's Krembil Research Institute, in collaboration with the University of British Columbia.

The treatment is called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), which is a form of treatment that uses magnetic field pulses to non-invasively stimulate a part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is associated with mood regulation. The study compared standard rTMS treatment, which uses high frequency (10 Hz) brain stimulation for 37.5 minutes per session, with a newer form of rTMS called intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS), that mimics the brain's natural rhythms and takes just over three minutes per treatment.

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Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a noninvasive treatment approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of clinical depression. The treatment is also being studied as a potential therapy for Alzheimer’s disease.

How rTMS works:
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia, affecting millions of mostly elderly people around the world. In these people, the synaptic activity (connections between nerve cells) collapses and brain networks gradually falter, resulting in a decline in memory and the ability to think and learn.

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Some pill-averse patients have longed for a natural cure for depression, while others complain that the drugs they’re on aren’t enough. Hope for both groups may have arrived through an unlikely source: magnets.

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For most of my 46 years, I have battled mild to severe depression and anxiety. Mood disorders run like a sticky red tape through my family, so it wasn’t a surprise that I needed a psychiatrist’s care starting as a young child. He helped me push on through middle and high school.

But when I went to college – away from my support system – I started thinking about suicide. Hearing this, a campus psychiatrist had me hospitalized, which only increased my despair. I attempted suicide and was institutionalized even longer.

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Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS), a therapy in which electromagnetic fields are pulsed through a coil placed on the scalp, can produce antidepressant effects in individuals who are resistant to or unable to tolerate standard antidepressant drugs. Now, a new study published in the journal BrainStimulation suggests that a new means of delivering rTMS, a “two-coil array,” can be safely used and may help to stimulate deeper areas of the brain than the current single-coil designs.

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