Posted on 08/05/2010 11:59:40 AM PDT by nickcarraway
A new treatment for depression being used in San Diego may look strange to some, but could be the wave of the future.
"I was completely hopeless," said Blake. "Six out of seven days a week I wish I were dead, that I could gracefully not wake up."
Studies show almost 19 million American adults, including Blake, suffer from depression.
She tried everything to help with her depression, including psychotherapy, acupuncture and electric-shock therapy. She tried anti-depressants, but they caused serious side effects.
Nothing seemed to work for Blake's depression until she found out about transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS.
"I felt a mental clarity that just was odd," she said of the experience.
It looks a lot like a dentist's chair, but works like something one might see in a science-fiction movie. Dr. David Feifel, director of neuropsychiatry at the University of California, San Diego Medical Center, knows a lot about the human brain and where depression starts. "There tends to be an under-activity of this area of the brain called the left frontal cortex," said Feifel. TMS induces activity in that part of the brain with pulsed magnets, provoking neurons to begin firing. After a series of treatments that can take up to six weeks, the area becomes active on its own. TMS is non-invasive and with very little or no side effects.
"The side effect profile, which is so positive, is really one of the pluses for this treatment," said Feifel.
The treatment is approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but it can be expensive. Since the treatment is still relatively new, it is not covered by most insurance companies.
But for people like Blake, this is their last and only hope.
"I have hope. I had no hope whatsoever. I have a sense of self, which I never have had in my entire life," said Blake.
A course of TMS costs between $7,000 and $10,000. It is now being used at Walter Reed Medical Center and other veterans hospitals to treat military vets suffering from depression.
Restoring a chemical imbalance in the brain isn’t quite that easy. Then, there’s the nasty side effects that the article mentioned. The reason why these sort of treatments are being tried is because there’s not just a pill to pop and voila! all the right chemicals are in the right amounts in the right places.
If you have a way to do this, find "true, measurable, chemical imbalances"" than can be fixed with chemicals, there's a Nobel Prize waiting for you.
Or do you call an ambulance?
EXACTLY my point.
So we agree? There is NO actual medical diagnosis which can say WHAT and WHY someone "Feels" bad? And so the choice is "TRY some random drugs and see if they dull your thinking enough that you don't feel as bad, or for $10,000 we will rub some magnets over your head. Or you could just "STOP IT". Self control. Self discipline. Self respect. And Self submission to the love and authority of your creator.
Yeah, I know what I posted, and it seems you do to.
See above post. I KNOW this. Which is why there is NO medical science on this. Unlike say "a bullet hole" in some other post. We KNOW what causes it, and how to fix it. Exactly.
When it comes to someone who "Feels" unloved, or "Feels" life isn't worth living. Or FEELS like that fear being buried alive in a box. STOP IT. Get over it. You CHOOSE your actions. No one give a frak how you FEEL about it.
It's like 50% divorce because you don't "FEEL" in love. Love is not a list of feelings, it is a set of actions and the will to execute them.
That is entirely what is wrong with the whole of the world, this liberal government, and most people just need a good spanking and to be told to grow up!
THAT is reality. Everything else SORCERY.
What if you post an inane non sequitor without reading the rest of the posts in the thread?
Do you FEEL better about yourself afterwords?
Wilhelm Reich was a brilliant and very peculiar man. Descended into paranoia as best I recall, “they” were out to get him.
In my more granola, libertine days after college, I knew people who really believed this stuff, had orgonomes and orgone generators, those outdoor tube deals, “cloudbusters.”
As a graduate of Catholic High School, I can say that some Catholics, the Pope included, believe a whole hell of a lot of nonsense things that are not even Biblical.
I also did not say Jesus would CURE them.
I said the solution to DEPRESSION. Not bullets, not getting your head cut off, not passing your physics test, was Jesus.
And as others so nicely pointed out, there is NO Medical or Scientific absolute cause or cure for people who "FEEL" bad. Because feelings do NOT have an account. Only DEEDS.
I don’t make change.
Well, I guess I will just have to post for 2 more minutes then.
Uhm let's see.
Oh, I also respond to inane trolls and their baited posts, more than I should.
(waiting for it, waiting for it....)
LOL
some suffering must be endured, but it is cruel to insist that you have to endure suffering when there is a remedy. God uses men’s hands to cure, not just prayers.
If our faith alone could heal there would be many empty wheelchairs right now. One person comes to mind in that respect a woman named Joni. Since age 17 {she's now 60 I think} she has been a quadriplegic. Yet she has the largest ministry to the disabled likely in the world.
Depression can be chemical issues in the brain or an undetected physical ailment. Usually it is not a lack of faith or a disbelief in GOD causing it. But you know that LOL.
Someone real close to me suffers from depression almost daily and has for years. I think some of the cheery persons saying Christ is the answer would have a hard time living with what that person does and having experience some of the abuses that person has. I do wonder if they could keep their faith like the person I know with depression has. Oh yea the person was abused most of life and confinded to a wheel chair 25 years next month. Yea someone tried to tell her that her lack of faith kept her in a wheelchair. I had to undo their damage.
Emotional pains are as real and as serious as physical ones. Some persons are healed through prayer and some are not. There is a matter called the will and purposes of GOD's Will some are ignoring it seems.
Christ is the answer in the very real sense that when we leave this world thanks to Him we will in fact be free of the curse which brings all ills both physical and mental forever. We will receive new bodies and healed hearts. But such is not promised us in this world. It can happen and it does happen but for anyone to try and say a persons faith or an accused lack thereof determines healing or sickness is wrong.
I think I understand now: you don’t comprehend what depression is. In a way, that’s great. Having to fight against one’s brain on a daily basis stinks.
Decades of observation of lives whose daily walk with Christ left no doubt about their faith and trust in His healing power, but yet some physical trauma to the brain brought on severe depression, may cause us to realize that we "see through a glass darkly" while in this life. Only the Heavenly Father, seeing the heart, can determine matters of faith as related to illness and suffering. Even those most devoted to their Lord may pass through such a "valley." As Dr. Ralph Sockman once observed, "When we begin to examine these matters, we must put away our little finite measuring tools."
In other words, determining the spiritual state of another requires a different kind of knowledge and wisdom, coupled with understanding.
Thank you for your words in these posts.
That's the post I responded to and it's the post I'm still responding to. While belief in Jesus is a very fine thing it in and of itself is certainly not enough to cure a serious mental illness.
People who suggest that it is simply look silly and ignorant. While prayer is a very powerful thing it can no more cure depression than it can mend a broken leg.
Very few are nuts enough to not seek a remedy. Nothing in Catholic theology says one ought not to seek a remedy.
I thought we were talking about depression. Kids with ADD is a whole other matter. That’s a different discussion entirely.
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