The Need for Treating Anxiety without Medication

Finding the best anxiety treatment can be challenging, especially for people looking for treating anxiety without medication. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18% of the population. Patients afflicted with anxiety and who have failed medication treatments and suffer other factors are more likely to develop anxiety that fails to respond to other treatments. These factors include other medical or psychiatric problems such as,
• Substance abuse
• Major depressive episode
• Diabetes
• Heart disease

Most often, patients with anxiety can be treated with a certain success by medication, psychotherapy, or both. But a large number of patients suffering from an anxiety disorder try medication after medication, often with talk therapy, with poor or no results. These are the anxiety patients who benefit from dTMS.

Of course, before treatment starts, no medical professional can accurately predict how any one patient will do with a certain type of treatment. But, dTMS appears to be an important treatment as it is a non-drug treatment for anxiety that can be coupled with psychotherapy. Clinical trials show it to be one of the most effective treatment modality. This is an FDA approved treatment that is safe without the usual side effects common with psychotropic medications. Also, there is no loss of memory or need for anesthetics as required for electroconvulsive therapy.

What is Anxiety

All of us face anxiety in our lifetime. But, for most it is situational. You may feel anxious about an audition, a job interview, a first date, or a deadline you need to meet. But, many of us suffer a general feeling of anxiety that is excessive and punishing. Fear invades our minds about everyday situations that can cause such a terrible feeling; many times leading to panic attacks. These bouts of anxiety occur often, are hard to control and peak within minutes and last a long time.

Best  hope for treating anxiety without medication

In 2008, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a non-invasive, non-pharmaceutical treatment of depressive disorders. It is called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). Just three years ago (2013) the FDA expanded their approval to include treatment resistant anxiety, in other words, anxiety that has not responded well to medication or combination of medications with or without talk therapy that a patient has tried and failed to get better. The acronym for Deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation is dTMS.

Dr. Brian Jacks is a psychiatrist that specializes in hard-to-treat mood and anxiety disorders and the director of New Brain Institute in Beverly Hills explains : “…first generation of TMS devices for treating severe major depressive disorder and now a newer form, Deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, has been approved to help people with major depressive disorder who have failed multiple medications — patients with what we call treatment-refractory or treatment-resistant depression. Deep TMS utilizes a special magnetic coil to create a magnetic field that goes much deeper into the brain than previous technologies could. Going deep into the brain allows us to stimulate areas involved in the management of emotions.”