TMS In The News

West Coast TMS Institute’s director, Kira Stein, MD and TMS Coordinator Erin Yates meet with the Press about being at the forefront of psychiatry’s new direction in magnetic therapy

Click The Following Link to Take a Look at the Article:  San Fernando Business Journal Article on TMS and West Coast TMS Institute

For more information on TMS therapy for depression or other disorders please click HERE and call us at 818-990-5901.   

We at West Coast TMS Institute are dedicated to helping patients on their journey to recovery.

If you found this post on our center intriguing, take a look at our blog featuring The Dr. Oz Show’s segment that demonstrates and explains TMS.  Dr. Oz does a fabulous job describing how TMS works and interviews a Columbia University psychiatrist about his experience with this drug-free, non-invasive, outpatient procedure.

Date and Time of TMS News Broadcast TBA

Last week a news camera crew joined us at West Coast TMS, interviewing our medical director Kira Stein, MD and two of our TMS patients, who were more than happy to share their experiences with the public on one of psychiatry’s most exciting drug-free, FDA-approved advances – transcranial magnetic stimulation for depression, or TMS.

The TMS news segment is projected to be broadcast on the television news locally, and possibly nationally, sometime this month.

Subscribe to our blog (on this page, on the right sidebar) to get notified when and where this TMS news segment will appear.

Our Director Dr. Stein (left) watches on as a TV News Cameraman Tapes a Patient Undergoing a TMS Session

 A Personal Story of TMS for Depression

  …What TMS has given me:

My whole life back,

My ability to love back,

My infinite hope back.

Written by Anonymous —

A female college student and West Coast TMS Institute patient

“One of the basic truths of depression is that it hits, hurdles, and hurts everyone in completely different ways. My depression didn’t allow me to pretend I was okay. My friends noticed before I noticed: my absence at parties and group dinners, my sudden lack of eye contact and the purple circles under my empty eyes, the staying in bed until six at night, the hysterical tears for no good reason except maybe that the barista hadn’t given me the right change and my soul was too exhausted to ask for another dollar. I wasn’t me, and I was hyperaware of this, embarrassed of the pathetic, small person I had become. I went from taking more classes than anyone (and getting straight As in them) to having panic attacks for every small assignment in the TWO classes I took the semester I became more and more depressed. Depression rendered me helpless, pathetic, incompetent, slow, uninteresting, burdensome. Medications didn’t work—they seemed to be Band-Aids covering a terrible, bloody, aching bullet wound. Psychotherapy consisted of talking about fighting this depression, and confusion at what that actually meant.”

“Yes, for major depression to go into remission, the depression has to lift. For some people, this happens over time—I’ve read memoirs of patients whose depressions lifted after ten months, after four years, or fifteen. I didn’t have fifteen years. I was young, and wanted to get back to my life, my friends, my happiness. I wanted to read Kierkegaard, meet my girlfriends in the city for lunch and a museum visit, fall in love. I didn’t have fifteen years.”

I was young, and wanted to get back to my life, my friends, my happiness.

“I turned to TMS because I didn’t have fifteen years, or four. I didn’t even want to waste another day, another hour, suffering. I don’t believe in magic, but I believe in science—TMS felt like both. After the third week of treatment, the depression, if you could even call it that at that point, shifted. My world and body felt lighter, brighter, and realer. In some ways the change was gradual, and in some ways it felt sudden. But when the depression lifted, I found that in moments I wanted to touch the grass outside, finally eat a meal made up of all the flavors, one that I could taste again, and kiss the people I love and dance with them all.”

“This is a simplified version of the story, because those moments were interspersed with plenty of my dragging myself through the day, still forcing myself at times to go through the motions. But at this point I felt like I belonged to the world again, like I had come out of a coma or been an invalid. That’s what TMS has given me: my whole life back, my ability to love back, my infinite hope back.”

If  this testimonial on TMS for depression was helpful, learn more from some of our other patients here.

 

ECT and TMS: Different Approaches to  Depression

A recent Los Angeles Times article called “Electroshock:  First glimpse of how it works adds clues to depression,” provides valuable recent research on how electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for depression reduces frontal cortical hyper-connectivity to various areas of the brain.  A newer, gentler, non-invasive treatment that specifically targets the frontal lobe, however, is available which also resets the depressed brain into a more selective and healthy rhythm: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, or TMS.

ECT and TMS: Approaching the Brain Globally versus Selectively

Clearly, recent studies support the notion that the most seriously disrupted brain connections in depressed patients are located in the area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s hub for planning, decision-making and mood regulation (Leuchter A et al, PLoS ONE, 2012:7(2): e32508; Perrin JS et al, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1117206109).

The good news is that the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that is found just behind the forehead and underneath the brow, is easily reached non-invasively using magnetic fields, which do not use ionizing or x-ray radiation.  This is why TMS is so valuable.  Unlike ECT, TMS is designed to activate the brain’s healing process by avoiding global seizures and cognitive dysfunction and by more selectively stimulating the very specific part of the brain associated with the most dysfunctional connections in depression: The prefrontal cortex.

ECT and TMS:  Relative Side Effect Risks

TMS is a drug-free, office-based, effective and FDA-approved procedure that uses MRI-like magnetic pulses to selectively stimulate the prefrontal cortex in order to treat depression. TMS for depression has a much milder side effect profile than medication, let alone ECT, and has been proven not to cause cognitive or memory side effects.

TMS and ECT: Different Approaches for Different Situations 

ECT:  A course of ECT usually involves 6-12 hospital-based sessions, with two or three ECT sessions delivered weekly, requiring 2 to 4 weeks of treatment. ECT is invasive, requiring general anesthesia, and usually has short-term cognitive effects that preclude independent living during the period of time the ECT procedures are delivered. Long-term memory deficits are also a potential complication of ECT.  Despite its invasiveness and potential complications, ECT’s ability to rapidly reset the brain makes it an appropriate option for patients suffering from extremely acute and severe cases of suicidal or psychotic depression.

TMS: For less acutely dangerous and severe cases of clinical depression that have not responded adequately to medication, however, it makes more sense to try to reset this network more gently, and selectively with TMS.  TMS sessions are usually held 5 days per week for 4 to 6 weeks and last about 37 minutes, during which patients are awake and able to watch TV, read a book, or participate in talk therapy. In between TMS, patients independently drive and can resume their daily lives without cognitive dysfunction, and can participate in psychotherapy and other activities that improve their daily functioning.  This means that, with TMS, patients with depression-associated work or family dysfunction are no further compromised by the cognitive complications associated with ECT; and as TMS patients start to respond to TMS, they are able to engage in their careers and personal lives much more quickly and effectively.  TMS, when used without medications, is at least as effective as antidepressant medication treatment.  When TMS is used as an add-on to medications, it has been found to be even more effective.  At West Coast TMS Institute, patients with clinical depression have a near 80% response rate, similar to ECT, but without the side effects, complications, or down-time.

TMS – A More Selective Approach To Depression with Less Side Effects Risks

Since the prefrontal cortex is known to be the part of the brain with the highest level of abnormal connections, and it is the most accessible “window” to the depression circuitry network through TMS, it makes sense that TMS is becoming a more commonly used treatment for clinical depression.

For more information on TMS in the Los Angeles area, please do not hesitate to call us at the West Coast TMS Institute at 818-855-1694.

If you found this post on TMS and ECT informative check out our post Still Depressed?  Invest in Your Health.