What is TMS?
Depression does not have one solution. Each patient’s treatment must be tailored to their individual symptoms. However, when traditional medication and/or psychotherapy fail, there is now an innovative alternative treatment specifically designed to relieve symptoms through mood center stimulation. It’s called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a non-invasive, non-medication option for depression treatment for patients who have not found relief from antidepressant drugs.
Cleared by the FDA, TMS is a process in which magnets are used to stimulate a specific area of the brain associated with controlling mood, promoting brain cell activity in the area. After repeated treatments, this stimulation can result in a decrease in depressive symptoms.
TMS is covered by insurance. Now available for patients 15 years and older!
Treat Depression Without Taking a Pill
TMS is covered by most commercial insurance plans in addition to Oregon Health Plan, TRICARE, TriWest, Molina Medicaid and Medicare. Not sure if TMS services are included in your insurance coverage? Give us a call at 503-389-3961 for a quick verification of benefits.
Unlike other more intense therapies, TMS does not require anesthesia or hospital stays: treatment sessions are 20 minutes long and patients are able to drive themselves home after each session. Patients are able to resume all normal activities after treatment and with treatment duration being so short, it is easy to fit into an average person’s full schedule.
When thinking about how to deal with depression, side effects of treatment can be a cause for concern. The side effects of antidepressant drugs can be so disruptive that they dissuade a patient from adhering to a depression medication plan altogether. With TMS treatment, the most commonly reported side effects are scalp discomfort and/or headache.
Our Partners
At Active Path, we have partnered with the leading TMS manufacturers, including NeuroStar Advanced Therapy and BrainsWay, to bring the latest in technology to our patients. This means we can offer several types of TMS treatment: BrainsWay’s dTMS and NeuroStar Advanced Therapy.
With Deep TMS (dTMS) magnetic pulses travel more deeply, allowing the therapy to stimulate more parts of the brain and provide broader stimulation of the targeted region of the brain involved in MDD, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. NeuroStar’s rTMS treatment protocol has recently been redesigned to reduce treatment time to just under 20 minutes with some variation from patient to patient. To read more about this technology, visit our Device Partners page.