In his garden outside of San Francisco, Deirdre Lehman tries to keep his demons at bay. For most of his life, medication and therapy helped him control his depression.
“I am technically bipolar,” she said. “You may have episodes of calm weather when the disease does not appear.”
But when he Is appear, for Lehman, is like falling head first into the deepest abyss of depression.
“I just fell off a cliff,” she said.
Clark, her husband, said one of the scariest episodes returned in 2018: “It wasn’t just depressed, it was suicidal, within hours.”
Deirdre recalls, “I said, ‘Clark, oh my God, the chatter is starting and I can feel it coming.’ This negative chatter about “No one is going to love me. I am ugly, I am a burden. No one will miss me if I kill myself. “
Correspondent Lee Cowan asked, “Is that what the gossip was telling you?”
“The chatter told me this.
Clark hid all the knives, and all the pills too.
She said, “You finally told my family, and as each of them called, I said goodbye. I wanted to die.”
She was referred to Dr Nolan Williams, director of the Brain Stimulation Laboratory at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
“This is a brain emergency,” he said, “and we have to deal with it with a really important intervention.”
He was conducting a trial for an experimental treatment using targeted magnetic stimulation. It’s called SAINT, which stands for Stanford Accelerated Intelligent Neuromodulation Therapy.
“We are treating it like a disease of the brain,” Williams said. “We find the place to stimulate the brain not to be suicidal, not to be depressed.”
In the photos of Deirdre’s first SAINT treatments, just days after the onset of this suicidal crisis, she went from staring blankly to eating, then smiling, all in one day.
She said, “I haven’t had any chatter. None.”
According to Williams, “Within 24 hours she was totally normal.”
“Were you surprised? Cowan asked.
“At first I couldn’t believe it. And at one point it just hit me that we had found something that was really, really important.”
The American Journal of Psychiatry has just published the results of the latest clinical trial of SAINT: nearly 80% of study participants saw their severe depression go into remission. Williams said, “It’s huge. It’s huge.”
One of Dr Williams’ first patients was Merle Becker, 83, who tried everything to relieve her depression: “Medicine for more fingers than you have on your hand!” she laughed.
Becker described his depression as: “You feel that there is no light in your life.”
Cowan asked, “And how long have you lived like this?”
“It’s been there my whole life. Since I was 20.”
She is a therapist herself, specializing in depression, so she knows what she is talking about. “Most people with a history of depression, especially severe depression, feel a sense of shame,” she said. “It’s something very deep inside. A heaviness in your body. You are in a tunnel and there is no way out.”
Her husband, Bill, has been by her side for 41 years, and he has seen firsthand how SAINT makes Merle feel more in control.
SAINT builds on existing therapies for depression called transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, but it uses a targeted, fast-acting approach. Dr Williams uses an MRI to locate the exact spot in Becker’s brain that is underactive in his depression and stimulate it with a magnetic coil.
“We’re trying to up-regulate or bring the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex back to its normal state, so that it has a sense of control,” Williams said.
“So what you’re basically doing is saying this to turn that off?” Cowan asked.
“Yes, it’s true.”
SAINT’s magnetic pulses are configured to mimic how the brain communicates with itself, and repeating these pulses essentially teaches the brain how to maintain its balance.
Williams said, “All of a sudden they’re looking you in the eye; they’re smiling more spontaneously; and then at the end of the week they’re telling you they’re feeling totally good and they’re back to their thing. normal state. “
It can be exhausting, and it’s rarely a one-time thing. Becker has been doing maintenance treatments periodically over the past four years… and so far there have been no serious side effects.
“By day three,” she smirked, “you feel better.”
WEB EXCLUSIVE: To hear a story from a patient with depression regarding the SAINT experimental treatment, click on the video player below:
Now there are two larger trials of SAINT underway, funded by the National Institutes of Health, including one that tests SAINT in a hospital setting during a brain emergency, such as a suicidal episode, where patients are under observation. “The frightening statistic is that the highest probability of a suicide attempt or subsequent completion is during these months. after the dump, ”Williams said.
He sees SAINT as something that hospitals could use almost like a fast-acting antidepressant, to stabilize suicidal patients who can, after a week of intensive treatment, leave the hospital feeling safe.
“It really changes not only the numbers on a page, but the perspective of people on their lives, doesn’t it? ” he said. “They’ll turn around and say, ‘You know what? I feel a whole different depression now. I’m empowered.'”
Deirdre Lehman’s point of view has become brilliant again. She returned to school to complete her college degree.
Cowan asked, “Are you feeling more depressed?
“No,” she replied.
“Not at all?”
“Not at all, not at all.”
Williams said: “This procedure is something that showed them that it’s really their brain. It’s not, you know, about them personally, about this deep self. But it’s really a disease of the brain. brain that we can identify and actually process and move. “
For Merle Becker, it gave her something she hasn’t had in a very, very long time: “Hope. I hope the younger me is here to watch this.”
Recently, the FDA granted SAINT breakthrough status, which means it is on the verge of becoming available.
Cowan asked, “So where do you see this treatment going in five, ten years?”
“It’s going to change the world,” Lehman said.
“It’s a big statement.”
“Oh, that is a game changer.”
Researchers generally don’t like to go too far on the ‘game changer’ branch, but Dr Williams is hoping he gets closer each day: “It looks like it could be. data to say it looks real, you know? And if it does what we’ve seen in other people’s hands, it just might be. “
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Story produced by Deirdre Cohen. Publisher: Ed Givnish.
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