TMS therapy giving relief to those with depression
Sep. 3—According to the Alabama Department of Public Health, in 2019 one in four adults residing in Alabama were diagnosed with Clinical Depression. The disorder is typically treated through medication and/or therapy, but for some, these treatments result in little to no reduction of their symptoms. For those, there may now be a new option. Dr. Robert Smith — at Sound Mind Clinic in Cullman — is hoping that by using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) therapy, patients who have run out of options, can finally find relief.
To qualify for TMS, most insurance providers require a patient to have previously attempted to treat their depression with at least four different Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (antidepressants), and the use of medication has been ineffective in treating their symptoms. According to Smith, this is roughly one-third of adults suffering from the disorder.
"This tool is so useful, and it's been proven to work on a group of the population that has no hope. I think that there should be at least one in every county," Smith said.
Justin Thurman, is among those who, after attempting various medications and therapies over the last six years, was unable to see any lasting reduction in his depression symptoms. Justin's wife Paige realized he was suffering from depression when he was unable to enjoy an outing on the lake.
"We were out on the lake with his family, everyone was having a good time and he was absolutely miserable. He had a very short temper, he was irritated over everything all the time. He said that he felt he was almost, like, lonely even though we were all out there together. I told him 'You need to go talk to somebody because that sounds exactly like depression,' and sure enough as soon as he did that's what it was," Paige said.
Justin said that after speaking with his primary care physician, and through counseling, he quickly came to understand he had been suffering from depression for most of his life. After three years of trying several antidepressants, Justin said he began seeing a psychiatrist who tried combining therapy with new medications. He said this helped, but only temporarily.
"My depression and treatment had progressed and failed to the point where I was desperate for anything at all that would work. If there was something that would help me, I was willing to try it," Justin said. That was when he discovered TMS therapy.
By delivering a non-invasive repetitive electromagnetic pulse to the prefrontal cortex, TMS treatments are thought to reawaken the areas of a patient's brain that are mostly inactive in cases of depression.
"Through neural imaging, we know that with a depressed patient the prefrontal cortex is extremely hypoactive. It looks like North Korea at night-time," Smith said. "What this machine does, is those magnetic pulses sort of gives that area a gentle massage and starts to wake that area up again."
Smith said he has had a dozen or so patients complete the entire cycle of 36 treatments. Out of his first 10 patients, Smith said that 40 percent showed their symptoms of depression being reduced by at least 50 percent. Another 40 percent saw symptoms completely resolved. To measure this, he uses a PHQ9 test that rates a patients symptoms on a scale of 0-27, with 0 representing no signs of depression.
When Justin first began his treatments, he scored a 22. Now — with only half of his treatments behind him — he at a 2. "He's my superstar patient," Smith said, explaining that to see results that quickly is rare. Typically, Smith says that one-third of patients begin to see a reduction of their symptoms by the end of the second week of receiving treatment, which grows to 40 percent by the end of the fourth week.
Justin said that since receiving the treatments, he has begun to see his life from an entirely new perspective. He said that what he once saw outside of his office window as just a background, is now a nuanced landscape. He said that he is able to enjoy his marriage again.
"It's back to, not quite the honeymoon phase, but like the newlywed era where you're just happy to around each other. You're glad that they're there. I mean there's no tension there anymore, we're just being us," he said.
One significant change he noticed while coaching his daughter's soccer team.
"I didn't even really realize this until the other night, and it just hit me like a ton of bricks. But before when I would be coaching, I would notice and point out all of the things that my daughter was doing wrong. But the other night at practice I realized that I was noticing everything that she was doing right."
