A magnetic therapy for persistent depression is in such demand in the Twin Cities that Allina Health has doubled its capacity with the opening of a new mental health center in Fridley, Minnesota.

While antidepressant medications and talk therapy are still the first options, Allina psychiatrist Dr. Bennett Poss said alternatives are needed for the growing share of patients who aren't helped by those treatments alone. Transcranial magnetic stimulation has been an option in the U.S. for 15 years, but it emerged in the post-pandemic era as more people sought depression treatment and more research validated its potential.

"Evidence-wise, it's one of those things that has actually panned out better or at least as advertised," said Poss, who provides TMS at Allina's Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. "There are so many things that look good in clinical trials and then they make it to patient care and they're not so good."

TMS involves magnetic coils that are placed on the scalp for around 30 minutes and direct pulses into the brain, usually at a golf-ball-sized target on the front left side that regulates mood. After one to two months of five-day-a-week treatments, about half of patients report some benefit and a third see remission of depressive symptoms, studies have shown.

Poss likened it to lifting weights or running, and he said that it stimulates a part of the brain that is underutilized in people with depression.

"We put it into use more than you would otherwise, and over time it causes some of the same changes you would actually see with exercise" to the body, he said.

More than 23% of Minnesota adults reported in 2022 that they had depression at some point, an increase from 15% in 2011, according to survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Minnesota in that time span went from below the national average to at or slightly above it.

TMS is only recommended for a fraction of those patients who have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, which is marked by severe and prolonged sadness and hopelessness. But clinicians said that is being diagnosed more as well.

"The cool thing about (TMS) is once people have received the treatment, and if they respond to it, they don't have to continue it, necessarily. So it's distinct in some ways from medication," said Dr. Sophia Albott, who heads the University of Minnesota's division of adult mental health.

The treatment has roots at the University of Minnesota, where Dr. Ziad Nahas was involved in clinical trials that persuaded the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve it in 2008 as a treatment for major depression in adults.

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