Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: What Is It and Who Needs It?
TMS uses magnetic pulses to electrically stimulate nerve cells in the brain and relieve symptoms of depression.
Though TMS can help to lessen the symptoms of depression, not all patients respond to the treatment.
By Kirstin Fawcett Dec. 15, 2014 | 11:58 a.m. EST + More
By the time she was 61, Martha Rhodes had spent decades battling intractable depression. Diagnosis: treatment-resistant major depressive disorder. She’d tried a variety of medications to no avail; most were ineffective or caused nausea, diarrhea, weight gain and mood swings. During one particularly low evening in 2009, she attempted suicide. And every morning when she awoke, she experienced what she describes as “an emotional nausea – it was like this feeling of, ‘Why am I still here? Why do I have to be alive?’”
But four years ago, Rhodes, now 65, of Danbury, Connecticut, underwent a procedure she says saved her life: repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, which uses magnetic pulses to electrically stimulate nerve cells in the brain and is used by doctors to relieve symptoms of depression.
“My feelings of hopelessness, wishing I were dead and that life wasn’t worth living – all of that went away,” recalls Rhodes, who chronicled her experience with TMS in her 2013 book “3,000 Pulses Later.” Rhodes says she shares her story with others to demystify the treatment – which is often misunderstood by both patients and doctors, though it's increasingly used by medical practitioners nationwide.
What Is TMS?
TMS was first developed in the early 1980s, but it was only approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2008 for patients like Rhodes, who’ve unsuccessfully tried one or more medications for their treatment-resistant depression and want to explore other options. That's according to Mark George, a professor at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
Depression, George says, is a disease that stems from a lack of activity in certain parts of the brain – specifically the prefrontal cortex, the region right above the eyes that helps regulate emotions. TMS is a technology that allows doctors to noninvasively stimulate that part of the brain and “exercise it back into health.”
During TMS, George says, a doctor takes a hand-held electromagnetic coil and holds it up to the front left side of the patient’s skull for nearly 40 minutes. The electricity creates a powerful magnetic field, which passes into the brain and causes neurons to fire electrical impulses. In turn, the electrical impulses encourage a chemical reaction that, over time, helps lift mood.
TMS is different from other brain-stimulation therapies, like electroconvulsive therapy. During ECT, patients receive anesthesia and are stimulated across the scalp with a very small electrical current. The current induces a short brain seizure, which produces changes in the brain’s functioning and chemistry. TMS, on the other hand, is a nonconvulsive procedure; patients don’t have a seizure, and they are awake and alert the entire time. There are also no cognitive side effects or memory loss in TMS, which physicians say are common – although benign – in patients who undergo ECT.
“But in some ways, the two procedures are similar,” George says. “We're trying to reset and wake up connections in the brain that aren't really working well.”
What Is It Like?
Five days a week, Rhodes, a former advertising executive, traveled to Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut, where she sat in a comfortable reclining chair with a magnetic coil affixed to the side of her head delivering 3,000 pulses to her prefrontal cortex. She was able to watch TV, read, receive visitors and relax. After the day’s procedure was finished, she drove herself home. This lasted six weeks, with a total of 30 sessions – a standard duration, doctors say, for a course of TMS. (Some patients decide to get TMS for shorter or longer periods – say, four or seven weeks – depending on their needs.)
Rhodes compared the sensation of having electrical pulses delivered to the side of her head in the form of four, 10-pulse bursts in a row (with a rest period of 26 seconds between each interval) to a woodpecker pecking her skull. She also had to wear earplugs to drown out the noise of the machine, which makes a loud tapping sound.
The treatment was “jarring” at first, but eventually Rhodes got used to it. Then about four weeks in, after her 19th or 20th daily session, she “felt this lightness,” she remembers. “All of the sudden, this cloud was gone.” Her depression had finally lifted – and right on schedule, according to doctors, who say that patients often experience relief from TMS within two to four weeks.
What Are the Side Effects?
There’s a very low risk of patients experiencing a seizure in TMS, says Irving Reti, an associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Brain Stimulation Program at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Side effects typically include a minor headache and localized pain underneath the magnetic coil.
Another possible side effect, says Lindsey Carpenter, chief of the Mood Disorders Program and the Neuromodulation Clinic at Butler Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, is a twitching or vibrating sensation around the face, cheek or scalp.
Rhodes says she didn’t experience any of the above symptoms, although she did occasionally take Tylenol to ward off potential pain.
Who Gets TMS?
Research suggests ECT is a more effective treatment than TMS for relieving severe depression. Therefore, many patients choose ECT over TMS if they’ve tried multiple medications or therapies to no avail, or if they’re suicidal, psychotic or catatonic.
However, George says, some patients with treatment-resistant depression are reluctant to receive ECT – typically administered three times a week until a patient's depression is relieved, which can take anywhere from six to 12 sessions. They worry about memory loss, or they don’t want to invest the time. (Since ECT requires anesthesia, patients are generally out of commission on treatment days, and must rely on rides to and from appointments.) TMS, George points out, is also time-consuming, but it can be integrated into a daily routine. A person with depression that’s bad but not life-threatening might be a good candidate for TMS if they’ve already explored pharmaceutical options. If TMS doesn’t work, they might opt for ECT later down the line – a decision Rhodes says she might've made had the former treatment not worked for her.
Additionally, Carpenter points out, many psychiatric patients have multiple conditions or disorders, and therefore aren't good candidates for anesthesia. “We use TMS for a lot of patients that otherwise would’ve gone straight to ECT if they were healthier,” she says.
On the other side, there are people who aren’t eligible to receive TMS, Reti says. Those with a history of seizures shouldn’t have it, as well as individuals who have metal in and around their head – say, a metal plate. (Braces and fillings are OK.)
Does TMS Work for Everyone?
Unlike Rhodes, not everyone in the medical community is convinced of TMS’s effectiveness. The National Institute of Mental Health calls the results of past clinical studies “mixed,” and the American Psychiatric Association says TMS offers patients “relatively small to moderate benefits.” Until recently, many insurance companies wouldn’t cover TMS. However, newer studies are showing promising remission and response rates among patients, as well as prolonged periods of improvement post-procedure.
George estimates that TMS can help up to one-third of patients achieve remission. And about 50 to 60 percent of patients show some response, he adds, meaning their depression symptoms have lessened. “It’s a pretty effective treatment,” he says.
But physicians warn that not all patients respond to TMS – nor can anyone predict who will respond. And although many insurance companies now cover TMS, some still don’t, and others require prior authorization. Medical assistance programs like Medicaid don't always pay for TMS. And out-of-pocket expenses for six weeks of TMS can total up to $10,000 – a lot for a procedure that might not work. “Unfortunately, that's the case with all our treatments in psychiatry,” Carpenter says. “It's one of the most pressing research questions: Who's going to benefit from a certain type of treatment so you can spare people the time, money and energy?”
Such was the question for Christy Moceri, a 31-year-old grant writer from Gainesville, Florida, who underwent TMS in July 2011. Like Rhodes, Moceri was a prime candidate for TMS – she’d experienced depression for years and encountered numerous side effects with medications.
“There isn’t a ton of research on TMS, but what my husband and I found was promising, and we could see that insurance companies were becoming more likely to cover it,” Moceri says. “We knew about the firmly established effectiveness of treatments like ECT and this seemed to be based on a similar theory. So we decided to take a gamble.”
Initially, Moceri says, TMS made her feel better almost immediately. “Significantly, markedly better, with no side effects,” she says. “Everyone on staff [at the clinic] was very encouraged by my progress.”
But her success didn’t last: Moceri once again slipped into depression and didn’t want to pay for follow-up treatments.
Additionally, doctors note, TMS patients often need a “top off” of sorts – brief booster treatments in case depressive symptoms return. Fortunately, Carpenter says, most TMS patients respond well to these maintenance TMS sessions. “If it got you better once, it’s extremely likely to get you better again,” she says, and much more quickly than the first go-around. Nevertheless, researchers still don’t know how to predict how long the benefits of TMS will last until a patient gets sick again.
Rhodes doesn’t take antidepressants anymore, but she receives maintenance TMS once a month. Although it helps manage her depression, she says, serious depressive illnesses like hers are lifelong and recurring. “TMS is a tool, not a cure,” she says. The year following her first TMS treatment, Rhodes had several “tune up” treatments. She later experienced a depressive relapse and countered it with another 10 TMS sessions. If she goes too long without receiving it, she says, she experiences obsessive thought patterns, weepiness and agitation.
Overall, Rhodes says her life has been restored – even if her depression never quite leaves her side. “What I have achieved with this therapy,” she says, “is a sense of vitality – a sense of wanting to be alive.”
Not everyone can pay out of pocket. 
