Is TMS right for me?
Unfortunately, in clinical practice, the occurrence of satisfactory treatment with pharmacotherapy for depression is the exception rather than the norm. Although antidepressants revolutionized the treatment of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) over a half-century ago, approximately one-third of depressed patients experience treatment-resistant depression (TRD) (Ionescu et al., 2015), regardless of the medication that they use.
Many patients discontinue treatment early because they cannot tolerate the prescribed medications associated with adverse events or side effects.
If you have been on two or three, or more antidepressants, but your symptoms of depression have marginally improved, you might be a good candidate for this noninvasive therapy.
TMS Therapy Might be Right for You If…
You’ve tried multiple medications with little to no success
You’ve had some success with medication but are not satisfied with the results
You are experiencing burdensome side effects from your mental health medications
Your depression has existed for a long time
TMS Therapy Might Not be Right for You If…
You have a history of epilepsy or seizures
You have a pacemaker, artificial heart valve, internal hearing aid (cochlear implant,) or other implanted device
You have metal objects implanted or embedded in your body such as plates, screws and or vascular clips
You have had a severe brain injury or have had an illness that could have affected your brain such as brain tumors or stroke
Is TMS therapy safe?
The evidence supporting the use of TMS is substantial, and this is reflected in the fact that TMS Therapy is now a recommended treatment option for use in patients who have failed to receive satisfactory improvement from prior antidepressant medication in the current episode. TMS therapy has gained general acceptance as a safe and proven treatment for major depression.
The American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) 2010 Practice Guidelines for the Treatment of Patients with Major Depressive Disorder state that “for patients whose symptoms have not responded adequately to medication…transcranial magnetic stimulation could also be considered…”.
Multiple randomized controlled trials and published literature have supported the safety and efficacy of rTMS antidepressant therapy. These consensus recommendations, developed by the National Nuclear Data Center rTMS Task Group and American Psychiatric Association CoR Task Force on Novel Biomarkers and Treatments, provide comprehensive information for the safe and effective clinical application of rTMS in the treatment of MDD (McClintock et al., 2018).
All of these recommendations are a testimony to the vast amount of information on the safe and effective use of TMS Therapy that now exists in the scientific literature.
References
Ionescu, D. F., Rosenbaum, J. F., & Alpert, J. E. (2015). Pharmacological approaches to the challenge of treatment-resistant depression. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 17(2), 111–126. https://doi.org/10.31887/dcns.2015.17.2/dionescu
McClintock, S. M., Reti, I. M., Carpenter, L. L., McDonald, W. M., Dubin, M., Taylor, S. F., Cook, I. A., O’Reardon, J., Husain, M. M., Wall, C., Krystal, A. D., Sampson, S. M., Morales, O., Nelson, B. G., Latoussakis, V., George, M. S., & Lisanby, S. H. (2018). Consensus recommendations for the clinical application of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rtms) in the treatment of depression. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 79(1), 35–48. https://doi.org/10.4088/jcp.16cs10905