The Center for Focused Care has brought a newer way to treat depression to Erie. The treatment picks up where medications and counseling usually leave off. Recently, the CDC announced in a press release that suicide rates have been rising across the U.S. 

From 1999 to 2016, suicide rates have risen across the United States. In Pennsylvania alone, the suicide rate went up 34.3% according to the CDC. Suicide is often caused by a combination of factors, but one of the leading causes is mental illnesses like depression. Typically depression is treated with counseling and medications, but there's a newer therapy in town that seems to be helping.

It's called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) therapy and as the name implies, it uses a magnet to stimulate brain cells. The magnet is MRI strength and sends magnetic waves to the region of the brain that controls moods. It's non-invasive and patients can typically go back to their daily routines with little to no side effects.

 Dr. Matthew Sipple from the Center for Focused Care described what TMS does. "What this does is it modulates the cells and gets them activated and excited and where those other pieces fail," he said, "this helps where these things kind of hit that brick wall."

Medications and counseling can plateau and stop being an effective treatment for many patients. As a result patients try different types of medications and it has been shown that patients who have to try various medications have a lower chance of remission. TMS therapy is used in those cases, where the medications fail to activate the areas of the brain necessary to relieve depression.

One of Dr. Sipple's patients started TMS almost a month ago, and the patient's mother has already noticed a significant difference. "Once this started, you could see the change. It took over where the medications left off and it just gave him life again," Cherrie Yosten said, "the biggest change is happiness. There is constant happiness and energy and motivation to do things."

To find out more about TMS at the Center for Focused care, contact the office here.