A Glimmer of Hope And Maybe A New Direction on Depression

Today's New York Times Magazine has an interesting, lengthy article on an experimental depression treatment--electrodes applied to a very specific brain region called Area 25--in Canada which seems to have nuked the depression of 8 of 12 patients for two years. That's encouraging--but a 67 percent success rate in a 12-person study isn't the end of depression treatment as we know it today. However, it may well lead to aggressively trialing this approach with patients to see where it might take us. Caveats: this is not the same as ECT and it is important to keep in mind that the 12 patients had depression in its most extreme form. What's more, it'd be kind of hard to do the usual 2,000 patient trial because everyone fitted with the electrodes would require brain surgery--and that's kind of intricate and expensive. But you never know. Read the article for more.