Depression is a serious condition that affects how people think, feel, and live their daily lives. For many people, antidepressant medications help, but a large number of patients do not improve even after trying several different drugs.
This situation is often called treatment-resistant depression. For these individuals, finding relief can feel frustrating and hopeless, especially when symptoms last for years.
One treatment that has brought hope is transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS. This therapy does not involve surgery or medication. Instead, it uses gentle magnetic pulses applied to the scalp to stimulate certain areas of the brain that are linked to mood.
Doctors believe that these pulses help reset brain activity patterns that are involved in depression. Large studies have shown that TMS can reduce symptoms in many patients and even lead to full recovery for some.
However, there has been a major challenge. The standard TMS treatment schedule requires patients to visit a clinic every weekday for six to eight weeks.
Each session is short, but the repeated travel and time commitment can be difficult for people who work, care for family members, or live far from treatment centers. Because of this, many people who could benefit from TMS never receive it.
A new study from UCLA Health suggests that a much faster treatment schedule may work just as well for many patients. Researchers tested an accelerated approach in which patients received five sessions of TMS each day for five days in a row.
This method, sometimes called the “five-by-five” schedule, delivers the same total number of treatments as the traditional program but in less than one week.
The study included 175 people with treatment-resistant depression. Most of them received the standard six-week treatment, while a smaller group received the accelerated five-day version.
Both groups experienced clear improvements in their depression symptoms. Importantly, the results showed no major difference between the two approaches, suggesting that the faster schedule could be a practical alternative.
One surprising finding was that some patients who showed little improvement immediately after the five-day treatment began to feel much better several weeks later.
When researchers checked again two to four weeks after treatment, these patients had significant reductions in their depression symptoms. This suggests that the brain may continue to respond and heal even after the therapy sessions have ended.
Doctors involved in the study emphasized that patients should not lose hope if they do not feel better right away. The benefits of the accelerated treatment may take time to appear. In some cases, adding one or two extra days of sessions later may lead to even greater improvement.
The traditional six-week approach still showed stronger results in some long-term measures, which means the accelerated method may not be the best choice for everyone. The researchers also noted that the study was not a strict clinical trial with random assignment, so larger studies will be needed to confirm the findings and determine which patients benefit most.
In reviewing and analyzing the study, the results suggest that accelerated TMS could greatly expand access to treatment. People who previously could not commit to weeks of clinic visits might now receive effective therapy in a single week.
This could be especially helpful for those with severe depression who need relief quickly. However, because the long-term effects are not yet fully understood, doctors will need to carefully evaluate each patient’s needs before choosing this approach.
Overall, the research points toward a future where mental health treatments become more flexible and personalized. Brain-based therapies like TMS may play an important role in helping people recover when medications alone are not enough.
With further research, accelerated TMS could become a powerful option that offers faster relief and renewed hope for many individuals living with depression.
If you care about mental health, please read studies about 6 foods you can eat to improve mental health, and B vitamins could help prevent depression and anxiety.
For more health information, please see recent studies about how dairy foods may influence depression risk, and results showing Omega-3 fats may help reduce depression.
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