I'm Trying A New Depression Treatment

I’ve been depressed for most of my life. Pretty much all of my remembered life. I have been in therapy for 9 years now, with a therapist I love who does a great job. I’ve been on 8 different psych meds over the years. And those things have helped a little. But they never helped a lot. I estimate that at best the meds reduce my depression symptoms by about 25%. Therapy gives me really helpful tools for coping with my depression but it’s still just coping. And to be honest, I had just accepted that I was going to be depressed for my whole life. That this would just be part of me.

Then someone close to me died by suicide. Someone, who I would guess, had also accepted that this was just what life was like.

His death made me want to talk about mental health awareness with everyone I interacted with. I wanted to talk about how there’s help to be had and how there’s always hope. And then I realized how hypocritical I was being. I was so ready to tell other people to hope without ever entertaining the idea that I could get significant help for my depression. So I decided to ask for more help. I decided to try.

That led me to a medication change (jury is still out) and also TMS or transcranial magnetic stimulation. I first heard about TMS from Jenny Lawson’s new book Broken (in the best possible way). She describes her experiences receiving this treatment and as I read it I thought, “Surely my depression isn’t bad enough for me to qualify for this type of treatment.” And then I thought more and more about it and realized that even with all the meds and all the therapy I’m still on the border between moderate and severe depression. And I’m never *not* depressed.

So I asked my psychiatrist about it at my next appointment. As it turns out, my psychiatrist’s office is one of the locations in my city that offers TMS treatment, and she thought I would be a good candidate for it. It took some time to get my insurance on board with this but as of now I am scheduled to begin my treatments later this month.

TMS uses magnets to stimulate a part of the brain that has been shown to have lowered blood flow in people with depression, the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. My treatments will last for about 18 minutes and they will happen five days a week for six weeks, followed by a three week tapering period. Having to go every day makes this pretty time intensive, but to qualify you have to have pretty severe depression, so I suppose a lot of us either can’t hold down a job or have flexible schedules to accommodate said depression.

TMS tends to have better results than traditional antidepressants with fewer side effects. I’m feeling cautiously hopeful that this will make a big difference in my life. But I’m also prepared to keep asking for help until something actually works. I’ll write more about my experience in the weeks to come!