Manreena Kaur

Depression is a common and disabling mental illness that can be difficult to treat and lasts a long time. Typical treatment options for depression are antidepressant medications and psychological therapies, which are helpful for some people but do not work for everyone. The underlying cause of depression is not well-understood, but one key problem is that brain cells do not communicate with each other as well as they should. Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a technique that can help to improve the communication between brain cells and this technique improves depression in many people who do not get better with antidepressant medication. However, this treatment is often not available to many patients with depression who may benefit from it, because it is expensive and takes up a lot of the patients’ time. Researchers are now working toward making this treatment more accessible, so that many more people with depression can benefit from it.