Perhaps you’ve tried medications to address your mental health and they haven’t made any difference. Or, worse, your symptoms have increased. Or maybe you just want to get a feel for what your options are for improving your mental health.
Whatever has brought you here, Dr. Diana Ghelber and the team here at Institute for Advanced Psychiatry in Fort Worth, Texas, welcome you to this discussion about some key differences between traditional medications and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
Let’s dive right in.
When we say traditional medications, we’re referring mostly to antidepressants, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. These medications have been a frontline treatment since the 1950s and have helped scores of people to improve their mental health.
That said, psychopharmacological solutions can also come with a long laundry list of side effects that include:
And the list goes on. Often, these side effects are so severe that people stop taking the medications.
Meanwhile, the list of potential side effects with TMS is much shorter. Some patients report tingling along their scalp and in their face. Uncommonly, people might experience a low-grade headache after a TMS treatment.
We want to continue this thread that TMS offers a safe path toward improved mental health by explaining the treatment a little more. In short, TMS is a neuromodulation technique in which we deliver rapid magnetic pulses into your brain to stimulate nerve cells. These pulses are about the same strength as an MRI, which means they’re not destructive in any way.
The FDA has cleared TMS with Brainswave® — a system that we use here — to treat major depressive disorder, treatment refractory depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Given this nod for depression and anxiety (OCD is classified as an anxiety disorder), we’ve expanded its applications to include a wide range of mental health issues that include:
If you consider that more than one-third of adults in the United States encounter an anxiety disorder while 21 million adults report depression, you can see that the need for a versatile solution is great and TMS is answering the call.
While versatility and safety are certainly key factors, you want to know that the treatment works and ongoing studies involving TMS are confirming its efficacy.
For example, one study reports that, “The clinical efficacy of TMS as an antidepressant has been well established,” which makes sense given that the FDA has cleared its use.
More studies are being conducted all the time and TMS is even gaining traction as a sole therapy and not an adjunct to traditional medications. In other words, TMS is proving itself as a new and much-needed standalone treatment for many mental health issues.
Ultimately, the decision is yours to make, and our role is to outline some pros and cons of different approaches for your mental health.
If you’d like to sit down with one of our specialists to figure out what would work best for your goals and your situation, please feel free to contact our office in Fort Worth, Texas, to schedule a consultation.
