Montclair Psychiatrist Treats Depression With Revolutionary New Treatment

Karen may be a competent high school science teacher, but she's also prone to dark moods caused by depression, which has plagued her since childhood.

"I started with regular psychotherapy at least 15 or 20 years ago," said Karen, who asked that her last name not be used. "I think I've gone through every prescription pill on the market."

Yet her depression reached a point in the summer of 2009 where she felt she could no longer face going to work.

"But I'm a teacher and we don't get disability and my husband wasn't working and so I had to work," she said. "My psychiatrist at the time suggested I try shock treatment but I tried to go on without it."

Throughout the year, her depression grew worse and worse, a condition she called "a cancer of the soul."

She added that "depression takes away every bit of vitality one could possibly have."

But then in walked a new psychiatrist and a revolutionary new treatment into her life.

Dr. Bruce Friedman is the only professional in Montclair who currently offers the NeuroStar TMS Therapy system, a system designed to treat major depressive disorder in adult patients who have failed to made adequate progress on antidepressants.

"I'd call it the most innovative/revolutionary/promising treatment for depression since Prozac came on the U.S. market in the late 1980s," said Friedman, who's been practicing in Montclair for three years. "The mechanism is somatic—meaning acting on the body—rather than chemical.

"It's a totally different process, with efficacy equal to shock therapy for non-psychotic depression, but without the meds needed for shock treatment," he said.

Friedman's only been using the TMS apparatus—which looks a bit like a dentist's chair—since July, and has so far tried it on only two patients.

But the results, he said, have been startling.

"One just told me he stopped all his medication two weeks ago and friends say that he's finally back to normal," he said.

TMS is the first and only anti-depressant treatment of its kind to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (October 2008).   The treatment, which is far safer and more convenient than electro-shock treatment (ECT), is clinically proven for the treatment

Karen said the treatment is non-invasive and that there are no side effects "except getting rid of the depression."

She admitted that the daily 45-minute treatments were, occasionally, a bit painful. But she said the pain only lasted about four seconds at a time and was manageable.

Karen finished treatment only a few weeks ago and said, that while her emotional depression was still evident, "I found that I was no longer dreading going to work like I had been the entire school year before ... it used to be that every day was a chore ... just getting up and getting into the shower.

"I don't feel that way anymore and I know that this is exclusively from this treatment," she said. "It was a life-changing kind of a treatment and I no longer feel like I have a weight on me."

Malvern, Pennsylvania-based Neuronetics is the company behind the TMS Therapy system. The treatment relies on a highly focursed, pulsed magnetic field to stimulate function in targeted brain regions, particularly that which regulates mood. The stimulation of neurons leads to the creation of more mood-enhancing dopamine.

Friedman said that TMS—the first and only anti-depressant treatment of its kind to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (October 2008)—is far safer and more convenient than electro-shock treatment.

Earlier this year, a study by the National Institute of Mental Health published in the Archives of General Psychiatry concluded that TMS was "a monotherapy with few adverse effects and significant antidepressant effects for unipolar depressed patients who do not respond to medications or who cannot tolerate them."

Available by prescription only, the treatment is performed on an outpatient basis, with each session generally lasting about 40 to 45 minutes a day for four to six weeks.

"I would recommend it to anyone," Karen said. "It changed my life."