By Paul Fitzgerald: For Complete Post, Click Here…
Rachel gets out of bed slowly, very slowly, still troubled by the oppressive weight of depression that she has been carrying for the past six months. This, despite the therapist she sees, and despite the antidepressant pills she has been taking, seemingly forever. However, her treatment today is different. Instead of taking a pill, she puts a cap on her head – a futuristic-looking device containing electrodes that both read her brainwaves and pass a gentle electrical current across her scalp. She boots up her iPad and enjoys the distraction of a game while receiving her treatment: electrical stimulation to her brain that is driven and refined by ongoing recording of her neural activity. At the end, she rates how she is feeling. This and other data from her session, and her previous treatments, is fed into an algorithm that continually refines her ongoing course of treatment.
This might sound far-fetched, but is far from it. Beyond recognising and addressing the importance of social interventions to ameliorate the external conditions that can contribute to mental health problems, the treatment of depression is currently evolving in unexpected ways. This is based on a shift away from thinking about depression as a disorder of ‘chemicals in the brain’ to an understanding that depression is underpinned by changes in electrical activity and communication between brain regions.
