You have very few peaceful moments in your life thanks to your obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and you're tired of constantly living in its shadow.
Dealing with a mental health issue like OCD, which affects 2.3% of adults in the United States, can be challenging and time-consuming. But these hurdles are getting smaller thanks to treatments like transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
At the Institute for Advanced Psychiatry, Dr. Diana Ghelber and our team have had a good deal of success in helping patients to better manage their OCD and progress faster thanks to TMS. And we feel confident we can do the same for you.
All mental health issues can have a big impact on your life, and OCD is no different. For the millions of Americans who struggle with the uncontrollable and recurrent thoughts and/or compulsive behaviors that come with OCD, more than half are seriously impaired by the illness. This means they can’t function well in many areas of their life, such as at work or in relationships.
As a result, finding a solution for OCD is critical for quality of life.
The frontline treatments for OCD are medications, typically antidepressants in the form of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), as well as cognitive behavioral therapy. The International OCD Foundation reports that 70% of people with OCD will experience at least some benefit from these treatments, but some benefit might be minimal and there’s another 30% of people who receive no benefit.
As well, another study reports that half of patients with OCD will respond incompletely to SSRIs. Not to mention, these medications can take weeks, if not months, to take effect.
At our practice, we understand that mental health issues like OCD often respond best to a multi-pronged approach.
We appreciate the valuable roles that medications and cognitive behavioral therapies can play, but we also don’t want to stop there.
The reason why we focus on TMS is that it’s a noninvasive treatment that’s not only effective in stimulating healthier neural activity in your brain, it works quickly. With TMS, we direct magnetic impulses into certain areas of your brain — in this case, the ones that are trapped in an OCD cycle — to create new neural pathways.
To give you an idea about how effective TMS is and how quickly it works, we want to highlight a recent study. Researchers analyzed repetitive TMS in 239 OCD patients and the results were impressive — nearly 63% of patients had a reduction of OCD symptoms by more than 35% after just 10 days.
We’ve seen similar results at our practice and we’ve helped scores of patients to progress more quickly to a place where OCD no longer rules their lives.
If you’d like to see whether TMS might play a role in helping to manage and minimize your OCD, please contact our office in Fort Worth, Texas, to schedule a consultation.
