TMS Therapy: A New Treatment for Depression!

TMS Therapy: A New Treatment for Depression!

Depression is a crippling disorder that goes well beyond the normal sad feelings and frustrations most people will experience in their lives. Depression has very real physical and emotional ramifications that can affect a person’s ability to go about their daily lives.

Many articles talk about the difficulty in diagnosing and treating depression, but for those who are experiencing constant anxiety, difficulty concentrating, irritability, feelings of “emptiness”, insomnia, and other symptoms of clinical depression, there might be a new treatment on the horizon that can bring relief and help them get back to their lives.

Smart brain and health is a leader in TMS therapy for depression, and it could be the answer to many people’s prayers in trying to find the right treatment for their clinical depression.

What is TMS?

TMS stands for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. Johns Hopkins has made a helpful overview of TMS that explains, “TMS has been shown to be a safe and well-tolerated procedure that can be an effective treatment for patients with depression who have not benefitted from antidepressant medications or cannot tolerate antidepressant medications due to side-effects.”

A typical TMS procedure requires a patient to sit n a treatment chair and then have a coil placed around their head that uses magnetic pulses to go through the skull to affect the brain cells lying just below. As the New York Times reported in an article about how TMS saved one woman’s life, “The idea is that a pulsed magnetic field, similar to that used in MRIs creates an electrical current in the surface of the brain that “resets” the patient’s mood regulatory system.

Why Choose TMS?

TMS is mostly recommended to people because it is non-invasive and has no known side effects. The problem with the most traditional treatment for depression, anti-depressant medications, is that they only treat the symptoms and not the depression itself, as Clinical-Depression UK writes on their website.

TMS is the perfect solution for anyone who wants to get at the root cause of their depression instead of just trying to alleviate the symptoms caused by their underlying medical issues, and when antidepressants have not worked or produce harmful side effects that make it impossible for a person to continue with their anti-depressant regimen.

It is important to note though that not everyone is a good candidate for TMS therapy. Anyone who has aneurysm clips, shrapnel near their head, metallic implants in the eyes or ears, facial tattoos with metallic ink, or any kind of implanted stimulator that might react badly to an electromagnetic field, cannot use TMS therapies because of the negative reactions of the metals.

What Are the Benefits of TMS?

For Martha Rhodes in Connecticut, who went on to write a book called 3,000 Pulses Later, TMS therapy led to her finally feeling lighter and not wishing that she were dead in the morning—common, and sad signs of depression.

Aside from the incredible progress that many patients have shown after partaking in TMS therapy, there is also the added benefit of the therapy’s non-invasive nature. Without any side effects or any of the unsettling processes of electroshock therapy, a patient needs to just sit quietly for 30 minutes at a time, and then start to feel better about themselves and their lives.

Also Read: Hybrid Work Model Could Lead To A Hidden Mental Health Crisis