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Since purchasing a transcranial magnetic stimulation device two years ago, Alma Hospital has treated approximately forty patients suffering from severe depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder. Another device is also available in Saguenay.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation is an alternative treatment for depressed people who respond poorly to conventional treatments. Compared to seismotherapy, the magnetic pulse is more precise and minimally invasive. By sending magnetic waves, a neuronal discharge is still generated at this point, which generates electrical reactivity in this area and helps bring people out of a stubborn depressive picture, explains the head of psychiatry at Alma Hospital, Luc Cossette, in a Interview on the show It’s never the same.
The treatment carried out in hospital lasts four to six weeks. When you sit on a chair, we place a kind of magnetic coil at the level of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, i.e. at the level of the forehead, at the top left. And there the treatment lasts three minutes and people can go home, specifies Dr. Cossette.
Magnetic stimulation is intended for patients who do not respond to conventional treatments for depression, that is, who have taken at least two types of medication over a period of time. 50% of people with resistant depression still react to it, which is very interesting, says Luc Cossette. And thus perhaps the third person who will experience complete remission.
The head of the psychiatric department at Alma Hospital mentions that sometimes it is necessary to repeat some treatments after a certain period of time. Not a full four- to six-week session, but perhaps two to three treatments to reinforce the gains achieved, he says.
The treatment is still little known in Quebec. Patients must be referred to psychiatry by their family doctor.
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