The first study of individualized brain stimulation to treat severe depression
I&#x27;m glad this is helping some people, and I&#x27;m always in favor of treatments that help people who are &quot;lost causes&quot; (people with chronic illness and every treatment they tried so far has failed), but this stuff really creeps me out. There&#x27;s that story of the Navy SEAL that developed mania and psychosis from excessive use of rTMS that was making the rounds a few years ago (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rewired.inewsource.org&#x2F;ucsd-kevin-murphy-prtms-navy-seals.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rewired.inewsource.org&#x2F;ucsd-kevin-murphy-prtms-navy-...</a>). It just seems like an example of scientists playing around with a complex system they have a very incomplete understanding of, with potentially risky outcomes. The brain isn&#x27;t a heart, it&#x27;s not just a matter of getting it &quot;beating&quot; at the right pace. With the Navy SEAL who went insane, the main problem seems to have been excessive treatment (rTMS worked at first, but the effects kept going away without more stimulation, so even though he was supposed to be &quot;cured&quot; after a few months and require no further treatment, he had essentially become &quot;addicted&quot; to brain stimulation). Brain stimulation implants seem too similar: meant to stimulate certain emotions in perpetuity, with nothing really addressing the underlying causes. Psychotropics are already suboptimal in that same sense (addressing symptoms, not root causes) but it seems like a safe bet that this will have more unintended effects than drugs. I don&#x27;t want to discourage anyone here from getting treatment (as a sidenote, what worked for me for depression was internal family systems therapy, which is also pretty &quot;out there&quot; and cutting edge) but I&#x27;m wary that with more focus and funding for rTMS, there&#x27;ll be less attention on finding more &quot;root cause&quot; solutions.