Dec 2, 2008 6:59 pm US/Eastern
HealthWatch: Depression And Magnets
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
Depression is a terrible and often debilitating condition that can affect one's relationships, job, and sometimes even lead to suicide. Medication can help, but not all patients respond to drugs. Now there's a new treatment for the disease that involves magnets.
Ari, as we'll call her, struggled with depression on and off for most of her young life.
"You feel immobile and perpetually fatigued. And have the horrible gnawing feeling inside that nothing is worth the effort and that it's all just going nowhere and life has no meaning," Ari said.
Ari's tried multiple medications with limited success, and significant side effects.
"It took my moods away completely. It took away the extreme lows but it also took away the highs. It made me very blase and blech about life, " Ari said.
Dr. Sarah Lisanby from the New York State Psychiatric Institute, explains: "Unfortunately it has been discovered that medications don't work for everyone, and this is a condition that has been called treatment-resistant depression or TRD."
But now there's a new option for patients who are resistant to medication. It's called neurostar and that's what Ari has been trying for the past couple of weeks.
She relaxes in something that looks like a dentist's chair, then Dr. Lisanby adjusts an electromagnet over the front of her head.
The FDA-approved device then pulses electromagnetic waves that stimulate certain brain regions. It's called trans-cranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS for short.
"Functional imaging have shown, in particular, that the left prefrontal cortex, or the left part of the brain behind the forehead, is underactive, and this is a part of a network of brain areas involved in depression," Dr. Lisanby said.
Treatment takes about 45 minutes, five days a week for four to six weeks. Ari's had about nine treatments so far.
"I'll kind of be walking down the sidewalk chuckling to myself, people are probably looking at me saying 'What is she on?' But that's the effect so far, which is definitely an improvement, when you can walk around thinking about jokes instead of thinking about worthlessness. Then that's a step in the right direction," Ari said.
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