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It's an unfortunate fact that many people who suffer from depression go untreated. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, only 46 percent of U.S. adults with any type of mental illness receive treatment. And even among those who do get help, an unlucky few find that their illness is impervious to therapy and medication. According to a 2019 research article published in BMC Psychiatry, up to 30 percent of patients with major depressive disorder will experience treatment-resistant depression (TRD). But a Kamakailang pag-aaral from the Stanford University School of Medicine, which tested a new type of experimental treatment, sparks hope with an encouragingly high success rate. Read on to find out about this exciting new treatment that has the potential to be life-changing for people struggling with TRD.

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According to a Stanford Medicine news article, nearly 80 percent of patients with TRD were helped by a treatment called neuromodulation therapy. "The treatment, known as Stanford Accelerated Intelligent Neuromodulation Therapy (SAINT) or simply Stanford neuromodulation therapy, is an intensive, individualized form of transcranial magnetic stimulation," the article explains. Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a form of brain stimulation which is non-invasive and uses a device to send powerful magnetic energy to activate neurons that are underactive in the brain.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb

As part of Stanford's double-blind controlled experiment, 14 of the 29 total participants—who had suffered from depression for an average of nine years and were between the ages of 22 and 80—received SNT, while the rest experienced a placebo treatment. After just five days, researchers concluded that 78.6 percent of treated individuals were no longer depressed, and within four weeks of the experiment, 11 of the 14 participants who recieved SAINT met the FDA criteria for depression remission.

A similar treatment, called intermittent theta-burst stimulation (or iTBS), was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2019. It involves daily sessions over the course of six weeks, and has been shown to lessen depression symptoms in about 50 percent of patients.

To produce better results in a shorter time frame, SAINT uses higher pulse volumes per session and gives patients more frequent, but shorter, treatments: 10 daily 10-minute sessions. SAINT also applies more targeted methods for each patient, with doctors doing further preliminary research into each person's individual brain circuitry before treatment.

One of the most exciting things about SAINT is how quickly it seems to work. Many treatments for depression, including iTBS, take weeks, or even months, to relieve patients' symptoms. With antidepressant medication, for example, people typically don't start to reap the full benefits until about eight to 12 weeks after they begin taking them, say the experts at Verywell Mind. And the Mayo Clinic says talk therapy methods, including psychotherapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), take time and can be difficult. "It's not uncommon to feel worse during the initial part of therapy as you begin to confront past and current conflicts," they explain.

Stanford's stimulation therapy reduces the timing of results to mere days, which researchers hope could make it a viable option for patients who are at a "crisis point."

"We want to get this into emergency departments and psychiatric wards where we can treat people who are in a psychiatric emergency," said Nolan Williams, MD, one of the study's senior authors. "The period right after hospitalization is when there's the highest risk of suicide."

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For patients who aren't helped by more conventional depression treatments, electroconvulsive therapy and vagus nerve stimulation are two other, albeit more invasive, options.

According to the Mayo Clinic, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, sometimes also known as "shock therapy") induces a brief seizure Sa pamamagitan ng pagpapadala ng isang serye ng mga maliliit na electric currents sa pamamagitan ng utak habang ang pasyente ay nasa ilalim ng anesthesia. Kahit na medyo kontrobersyal, humigit-kumulang isang milyong tao ang sumasailalim sa pamamaraan bawat taon, at natagpuan ng isang pag-aaral sa Cambridge iyonhigit sa 40 porsiyento ng mga tao Sino ang nakaranas ng pagpapatawad ng mga sintomas ng depression.

Ang pagpapasigla ng vagus nerve ay isang pamamaraan na karaniwang ginagamit upang gamutin ang epilepsy, ngunit maaari ring gamitin upang gamutin ang depression. Tulad ng ect, itoNagpapadala ng mga de-koryenteng pulse sa utak, ngunit sa pamamagitan ng isang aparato na inaprubahan ng FDA na itinatanim sa dibdib, ipinaliwanag ng Mayo Clinic. Ang aparato ay nagpapadala ng mga signal sa pamamagitan ng kaliwang vagus nerve ng katawan sa brainstem. Isang 2005 na pag-aaral sa.Biological Psychiatry. nagpakita na 27 porsiyento ng mga kalahoknakaranas ng "makabuluhang pagpapabuti" pagkatapos sumailalim ang vagus nerve stimulation.

Kaugnay:Kung madalas kang gisingin sa gabi, maaari kang kulang sa nutrient na ito.