My daughter first experienced symptoms of depression when she was 15 and in high school. In the eighteen years since then it has been worse and a little better but it has never completely lifted. She has tried every possible medication and combination of medications. She and her doctor have tweaked and backed-off and recombined, to little effect. She has what’s called treatment-resistant depression.
She is married and working but the symptoms never went away. For the past several years the depression has been made worse by chronic migraine headaches. Again, she has tried all the conventional medications, including Botox, with the exception of opioids. Nothing mitigated the headaches.
She was miserable. Every now and then I would search the web for something new she could try. Light therapy. Acupuncture. Yoga.
At the end of 2018 I became aware of two new treatments being tried on depression patients. One was ketamine, used off-label, and the other was Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, which is FDA approved. She was reluctant to try ketamine but asked her doc about TMS. He agreed it was worth a shot and she began TMS treatment in January of this year.
The treatment took 47 minutes every weekday for six weeks. She had her brain mapped and when they found the sweet spot they marked it on a skullcap type of hat and she got zapped in that spot for 47 minutes every day. (I’m using layperson’s language here.) The sessions were not painful and she went right back to her normal life at the end of each session.
At first she felt no change, and they assured her that the treatment took time to work. She went faithfully every day and toward the end of the six weeks she noticed that her headaches had improved, and they gradually disappeared.
So now she was headache-free but still depressed. The end of the treatment came and they told her not to be discouraged, she might still see improvement in the coming months. We all kind of felt, yeah, right. She really had no hope for future improvement and decided to try the new Esketamine nose spray that has recently be FDA approved. The facility would be ready to administer the Esketamine in their clinic in July and she made plans to return for that therapy then.
While she was waiting for the new treatment she found a new therapist and felt she was making some progress with him. She quit her job because she felt like it was exacerbating the depression and found a new one within weeks. She likes the new job. The headaches have not returned. Her mood is good. This past weekend she drove 4 hours by herself to her college reunion.
She remarked that she said to her therapist that she was surprised that she was able to drive that far and attend the reunion on her own, and that she would never have been able to do that before. I said, “before what?” And she said, I don’t know, I just wouldn’t have been able to that in the past. I said, “maybe before TMS?” And she said, oh, she hadn’t thought of that.
So at this point, she has no headaches, her mood is good, she has a better job and a therapist she likes and she feels optimistic. She is backing off on the depression meds. I don’t know what the future holds but I think the decision to try TMS was the right one.
I am posting this because I read so often on these boards about kids (and adults) suffering from depression and I want them to know about this treatment and would encourage them to try it if meds aren’t working. I have been a member here for many years and I have no financial or other interest in TMS. Oh, and TMS was covered by her insurance.