New Frontiers in the Fight Against Depression

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When patients with severe depression don’t respond to medication, psychiatrists sometimes turn to a treatment known as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). The non-invasive therapy uses pulses of magnetic activity to stimulate the brain, and about half of patients see their symptoms improve. Now, researchers at Stanford say they have developed a new and improved version of rTMS, tailored to each patients’ neurocircuitry. In one study, nearly 80 percent of severely depressed patients experienced a normal mood within five days. We’ll talk to the lead researcher on the Stanford study and other experts in the field about the latest developments in rTMS and other methods of treating depression and mental illness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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1:00.0	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. For people suffering from severe depression, it can seem that nothing will ever, ever, ever get better.
1:07.0	Treatments have improved over the last 30 years, but some people do not respond to the classes of
1:11.7	drugs that have become the basic treatment option. And that's where new acute treatments have begun
1:17.1	to show major results. One important new option is actually stimulating parts of the brain with
1:22.1	pulses of magnetic energy. For reasons that remain a bit mysterious, this can make some people suffering from depression feel radically better for months.
1:30.6	We'll dig into the science and hope represented by new psychiatric developments like this.
1:35.5	That's all coming up next.
1:52.5	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. For many years, the prevailing theory for why people became depressed has centered on imbalances and some of the chemicals floating around in our brains.
1:59.2	Thus, the frontline treatment became Prozac and similar drugs like Zoloft,
2:03.6	which aimed to change the mix of brain chemicals to a healthier configuration.
	...

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