When it comes to treating mental health issues, it’s important to understand that there’s no magic bullet. Everyone’s brain chemistry is different, and we’ve found that mental health issues often benefit from tailored solutions that don’t rely solely on antidepressants.
This discussion is more important than ever since mental illnesses are on the rise in the United States — depression percentages now include 29% of adults, which is nearly 10% higher than in 2013. Given these numbers, it makes sense to pull out all the stops when treating depression.
To that end, Dr. Diana Ghelber and the team here at Institute for Advanced Psychiatry want to explore the benefits of combining antidepressants with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) therapy.
Read on to learn how this combined approach is helping people to break free from depression more quickly.
In previous blogs, such as the one found at this link, we’ve discussed the issues with treatment-resistant depression, which means that a person has failed to respond to two or more rounds of medications. Treatment-resistant depression is prevalent and affects at least 30% of people with depression.
Aside from not working some of the time for some people, depression medications, namely selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), can also lead to unwelcome side effects that range from low libido to weight gain.
Our point here is that antidepressants can play an invaluable role in helping people to break free from depression, but they’re not a solution for everyone.
If you’re responding to antidepressants, that’s great, and we don’t want to tinker with these results. That said, we do want to make the case for expanding your treatment protocol.
For starters, people who take antidepressants should also engage in therapy, such as talk therapy and/or support groups. This work can really help cement what the medications are accomplishing.
Our experience is that when people add repetitive TMS to their depression treatment plan, results only get better. rTMS works by targeting dormant areas in your brain and encouraging more neuron activity in these areas to create healthier neural pathways for improved mood regulation.
This approach in no way affects how the antidepressants are working — the medications work by rebalancing brain neurotransmitters while the TMS activates key areas of your brain. So, they won’t cancel each other out — far from it.
In fact, this one-two combination has been the subject of research and results are positive. For example, one study reports that, “The combination of rTMS with SSRIs … significantly reduced depression severity, increasing response and remission rates.”
Another study found that, “Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation could accelerate the antidepressant effect of SSRIs in young patients with a first-episode major depressive disorder.”
So, if you really want to get to a place where depression isn’t overshadowing everything in your life, we urge you to consider treating it from every angle possible — medication, rTMS, psychotherapy, and lifestyle changes.
To gain the upper hand on your depression through a multipronged treatment plan, we invite you to contact our office in Fort Worth, Texas, to schedule a consultation.
