Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on September 4, 2010
A new therapy that electrically stimulates a major nerve in the brain shows promising results for relief of major depression. The treatment — trigeminal nerve stimulation (TNS) — reduced depression symptoms by an average of 70 percent during an eight-week study conducted at UCLA.
Major depression is a disabling brain condition resulting in depressed mood, negative effects on sleep, energy, decision-making and memory, and possible thoughts of death or suicide. The disorder affects 15 million adults in the U.S., and according to the World Health Organization, by 2020 it will be the second-largest contributor to disability in the world.
Although antidepressants have helped many people recover from major depression and resume their lives, there is only a 30 percent success rate for patients taking their first medication. If the first drug doesn’t work, patients typically continue trying a series of other antidepressants. Most of these medications have significant side effects, including obesity, sexual dysfunction, drowsiness, nausea and fatigue.
Dr. Ian A. Cook, the Miller Professor of Psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the study’s head investigator, presented the results at a recent National Institutes of Health conference on depression and other psychiatric disorders. There he noted that 80 percent of the subjects achieved remission with electrical stimulation, a significant statistic in this pilot study.
TNS Electrical Stimulation Helps Depression
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