Treatment-Resistant Depression
I want to share my personal experience about struggling with “treatment-resistant” depression on-and-off for the last 14 years, and to tell you about the Depression treatment that took me from my most recent episode, which was well into its thirteenth month, to 100% remission, gradually, over a six-week period. Since completing my series of 32 TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) therapy treatments, one every week day, for a bit over 6 weeks, I have been totally depression-free. I’m not saying this will be the answer for you, if you have severe, “treatment-resistant depression,” as I did, I’m merely relating my story.What really scared me was the fact that, over the last few years, the episodes of 100% disabling Depression illness were growing longer and coming closer together. It appeared to me that I was looking at spending, maybe, the rest of my life in a state of major depression. That was unacceptable to me, so despite my being told that “everything that can be done has been done, and I’d just have to live with it,” I kept looking and asking different doctors until I found something that appeared to offer hope—at that point, I had nothing left to lose and was willing to try anything that might even have a chance of working.
My current psychiatrist suggested TMS therapy treatments, but he cautioned me that I’d probably have to travel a good distance to get them and have a prolonged battle with my insurance company to get coverage. Both turned-out to be true, but after a series of denials and appeals, letters of medical depression necessity from two different psychiatrists, and an arm-twisting phone call by one of them directly to my insurance company, they approved coverage at 80% (the maximum my policy allowed). This made it possible for me to proceed. (At the time, there were only about 14 centers in the U.S. offering TMS. I have read that, since then, that number has mushroomed to 145.) ...
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