Everyone has experienced a bout of 鈥渢he blues鈥?at some point. But clinical depression, which affects 19-million Americans each year, can often mean years of feeling helpless, hopeless and sad. Many are helped by antidepressants medications, but what are the alternatives when medications don鈥檛 work? Doctors at Emory in Atlanta are testing a new non-drug therapy.
Barbara Powell says, 鈥淚 will sit on the end of couch during the day and hardly ever move.鈥?/P>
Even simple chores sometimes feel monumental to 58-year old Barbara Powell. She suffers from clinical depression. The serious illness has changed the way Barbara eats and sleeps.
Barbara says, 鈥淚 become very irritable, especially towards my husband. Sometimes I just don鈥檛 think he can do anything right.鈥?/P>
Barbara sought help鈥?but prescription antidepressants did not give her relief from the darkness of depression.
Dr. William Powell says, 鈥淚f you look at depression, the medications are pretty effective. Sixty-five to 70 percent of people get well with the medications. But that leaves 25 to 30 percent of the people who don鈥檛 get all the way well.鈥?/P>
Now, Mrs. Powell is participating in a study of a non-drug therapy at Emory University. It鈥檚 called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS. Dr. William McDonald is trying to determine if TMS鈥?which is used in Europe鈥?can help those who are not helped by antidepressants.
Dr. McDonald says, 鈥淚t works by taking electrical energy and converting that electrical energy into magnetic pulses. Magnetic pulses can pass through the hair, through the scalp and into the brain. When they hit the brain, they then fire neurons in the brain. Depression seems to be a disease in which the neurons don鈥檛 fire and don鈥檛 work well. This helps those neurons fire and fire normally as they would in non-depressed people.鈥?/P>
Participants in the study will receive TMS therapy for approximately 35 minutes a day for six weeks, followed by three weeks of tapered TMS.
Barbara says, 鈥淚 know that being depressed鈥t鈥檚 a chemical imbalance. And so I put a lot of faith into those pills. When they don鈥檛 help you, you have to find something.鈥?/P>
In this study, the selected area for transcranial magnetic stimulation is the front, left portion of the brain because it is thought to affect mood.
Possible side effects may include headaches, hearing loss, and rare reports of seizures.
To find out more about this study, please contact Emory Health Connection at 1-800-753-6679 or 404-778-7777.
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