As I read the article about treating severe depression with deep brain stimulation (DBS), I couldn’t help but wonder if it might offer hope for other disorders. Could it possibly help severe cases of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), too. Originally used to treat people with Parkinson’s disease, researchers found that 50 percent of those treated with DBS also showed a reduction in depression symptoms. Requiring a minimally invasive surgical procedure, deep brain stimulation is achieved by the placement of electrodes into specific parts of the brain that are believed to be malfunctioning. Once the electrodes are in place, they emit adjustable electrical pulses that block dysfunctional activity in the brain. This technique has been used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease for about 20 years. Researchers from Brown University and Massachusetts General Hospital have also had success in using DBS to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder. Therefore, it may not be that far fetched to hope that this treatment might help severe cases of PTSD. Perhaps it can offer hope for children adopted after being subjected to years of physical and/or sexual abuse.

The study author is Dr. Ali Rezai. He is the director of the Center for Neurological Restoration at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. He indicated that there was a lot of promise in DBS for patients with severe, intractable depression. Somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of depression cases, result in severe depression. For these people, antidepressants and electroconvulsive (ECT) therapy often fail to improve their depression, which increases their risk of committing suicide. According to researchers, up to 15 percent of people with major depression commit suicide.

The current study placed DBS implants into the brains of 15 people who had suffered from depression for at least five years. Additionally, their symptoms had not improved with the other treatments commonly used for depression. Reviews at six months and again at one year after the DBS implants showed that nearly half of the patients showed significant improvement. The others all showed some improvement and the treatment was well tolerated. Now, if doctors can just convince insurers to pay for this procedure to treat depression.



Photo Credit: 2007 Julia Fuller.