Bipolar Disorder & Bipolar Depression Treatment with TMS
Using TMS to treat Bipolar Disorder and Bipolar Depression
Dr. Robert D. McMullen is a psychiatrist who went to Georgetown Medical School and then completed his residency at Columbia Presbyterian. Dr. McMullen has been in practice in New York City and in Mount Kisco for the last 36 years.
In this video Dr. McMullen talks about treating depression and bipolar disorder. Dr. McMullen has over these years in his practice concentrated on treating people with medication for a whole gamut of psychiatric illnesses like panic attacks, depression, manic depression, schizophrenia, and others. Five-and a half years ago Dr. McMullen added a new modality in the office known as TMS or transcranial magnetic stimulation. The pulses go on and off and the magnetic field easily goes through the skull and that changes the electrical activity underneath the coil and it is possible to either excite or inhibit under the area and in different places. The response rate has been extremely high in regular unipolar depression where people have been treatment resistant and have not done well on medicine for many years. There have been approximately 50% of people who have come all the way to normal and then they stay there for a long time and when they relapse they do not need another 30 treatments, just another 5 or 6.
The hardest thing to treat is often bipolar disorder and it can be either bipolar I or bipolar II, but in either case sometimes it is almost impossible to use a standard antidepressant because it just fires things up, it is stimulating them too much. The patients can either be treated the standard way, with excitatory treatment on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Dr. McMullen though recommends the new therapy to the right-sided inhibitory treatment, a quiet treatment on the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
Dr. McMullen cites an example of a 29-year-old lady who Dr. McMullen has treated since she was 15. She had chronic depression and lot of anxiety back then. All her life she had fluctuating depression. On medication, she was better but she was never quite up to normal. She almost became suicidal. Dr. McMullen immediately started the treatments. After 25 or 30 treatments she would be completely normal but it would only last a couple of days and she would start to go down again, and may be even get suicidal. At this stage, Dr. McMullen was doing the treatment twice a week just to keep her head above water, and Dr. McMullen was beginning to worry and wondering if he was going to have to keep doing this her whole life, keep giving her two treatments a week and then there was a treatment she had and unbeknownst to Dr. McMullen and his teat that was the last one. She stayed fine.
In summary, TMS works for a lot of different neurological and psychiatric disorders and we are finding more and more things that it may work for, but one of the big ones is depression in the context of bipolar disorder, which is a very hard depression to treat often, and this seems to be able to treat it without causing more cycling and also with having a long-term benefit.
TMS BrainCare
Address: #2, 171 W 79th St, New York, NY 10024
Phone: (212) 362-9635
http://tmsbraincare.com
10 Comments
I have bipolar depression l am 24 treatment in to TMS lam losing a lot of sleep & the treatment is not working so far. I am told that TMS my start to work after 35 treatments. Is this correct will I start feeling better after the treatment is complete. Thanks
I have bipolar depression and my psychiatrist told me that TMS will not help me because I am bipolar and I shouldn't waste my money. I lost so much hope after she said this.
You should've stopped the video once the police siren started it was terribly distracting.
The lady you talked about needing all of the sessions to keep an even mood did she need to stay on medications?
I’m bipolar disorder. I’ve taken TMS treatments about 40 times. It worked, definitely.
I’m Bipolar type 2 and I’m so sick of antipsychotics. I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with meds. I don’t wanna take meds anymore because the antipsychotics make me have high cholesterol. I just want to do TMS therapy. The thing about Bipolar type 2 or 1 they will never tell a physician they are experiencing manic or cycling. I want to stop meds. I’ve been on meds for 28 years. Nothing has ever helped. The side effects are worst then the depression. Doctors need to understand that these med cocktails are all killing us slowly. I’m so sick of it! I just got off Caplyta. It worked for like a month! I haven’t felt that good in years and years. But… after a month I started having all these horrible side effects. No doctor I’d seen in that month could figure it out. I seen 2 specialist and 3 ER doctors as well as 2 primary care doctors and none of them thought to look at med side effects. I’ve been on so many meds through the years… this has never happened to me. Usually bad side effects come on pretty quickly. Which was why I didn’t think of it being the problem. I was dizzy, lightheaded, passing out, chest pain and numbness in my body and even my teeth felt numb. I could barely walk and couldn’t drive. In fact I couldn’t even look at the road without wanting to throw up. All the doctors gave me where Nausea. I definitely wasn’t myself and could barely talk and lost a lot of my brains ability to function. It was the most scariest of meds I’ve ever had to deal with. I needed up finding out for myself what was wrong and immediately stopped that med. it’s been like 3 weeks since then and I feel like my old self again. But depression is always there. My personal doctor who was on vacation while all this was going on he told me after that I was a heart attack waiting to happen. So what do people like me do? I’ve tried practically every antipsychotic there is. I’m scared! I’ve had many bad experiences with those meds and I just don’t want my cholesterol to go up even higher. Which is what antipsychotics do. They ruin your liver and give high cholesterol along with a lot of other things. I vow to not take one again. I know that sounds crazy but they have all caused me nothing but grief and tons of weight gain. I also have fibromyalgia so…. I just don’t want to have to take 10 or more pills a night. Sick of it! I will do TMS therapy and that only. No more meds for me. I always vowed to be on meds forever but after this last bad reaction. I can’t risk dying for happiness. I don’t even care if I’m happy I just want to feel some normalcy in my life.
My God! I was so alarmed by the sirens I could barely focus on what was said.
Next time please go into a room where these sirens are not heard as this not only makes it hard to listen but triggered me also
My doctor say tms therapy not functional for bipolar disorders
Holy cow that noise in the background could’ve been eliminated
Ive been told that TMS is only for resistant severe depression, not bipolar. What about severe depression in bipolar? My doctors are resistant even though it’s so successful. My life gets worse and worse and have not much help, soon I will have no help at all.