In our practice, we have worked with patients with a variety of neurological and psychiatric conditions, including anxiety.  Because so many people experience daily anxiety, they don’t always recognize when their symptoms cross the line from everyday anxiety into a pervasive mental health condition. Led by Kevin Murphy, MD  the team at MindSet in San Diego, California, is dedicated to helping people with this type of overwhelming anxiety.

Excessive and persistent anxiety affects your ability to enjoy life and can take a toll on your health. Additionally, many people continue to struggle with anxiety even after they get treatment from a mental health provider.  In our practice, we have worked with many patients with anxiety.  We offer personalized repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (PrTMS)-a therapeutic approach that can be pursued as an option where conventional therapies have failed.

So when should you contact MindSet for treatment? Let’s take a look at when you should consider seeking professional medical care for anxiety and at what point it might make sense to contact MindSet to see if PrTMS may be right for you.

Overwhelming anxiety needs professional care

No one can escape anxiety because it’s a natural response that automatically occurs in your body. When you feel stress or fear, whether you’re anxious about a job interview or face a truly dangerous situation, your brain automatically sends chemical messengers throughout your body, preparing it to stand strong or to quickly flee to avoid the problem.

Anxiety problems begin when your body stays on active alert even when you don’t face a real, immediate threat. When this type of chronic anxiety controls your life, causes constant worrying, and stops you from living your normal daily life, you should consider seeking the support of a mental health professional to overcome your symptoms.

Conventional treatments help many, but not everyone.

Mental health professionals treat anxiety with psychotherapy, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and medication. When your mental health provider accurately diagnoses your anxiety, they have experience using evidence-based CBT, and you fully participate with therapy, chances are your anxiety will improve.

Medications may or may not help. There aren’t any medications that cure anxiety. Instead, they help relieve your symptoms. However, their effectiveness varies from one person to the next because everyone metabolizes medications differently.

There are many variables that factor into the success of conventional medical treatment for anxiety, ranging from the type of medication to the dose you receive. Nearly everyone goes through a period of trial and error, and it can take 4-6 weeks or longer to determine if your treatment is effective, so you’ll need to give it some time.

But when conventional treatment isn’t successful and you still struggle with anxiety, PrTMS may help.

PrTMS may be helpful for patients with anxiety disorders where conventional therapy has failed.

When you have anxiety, nerve activity in specific areas of your brain is underactive or irregular.  We can identify these areas using an electroencephalogram (EEG) that clearly reveals the electrical activity of the nerves in your brain.

This EEG allows us to personalize your PrTMS treatment, as your MindSet physician will use this information with a proprietary algorithm to develop a customized treatment plan, including treatment locations (i.e. which brain area to target) and the level of magnetic stimulation needed.  Your initial EEG also gives us a baseline measurement that we use to evaluate your progress.

During PrTMS, we treat the targeted area with repetitive magnetic pulses that stimulate nerve activity. During your treatment, you simply relax and sit still while a specialized TMS device produces the pulses and sends them into your brain.  PrTMS treatment is non-invasive, and drug free.

PrTMS may help restore normal brain activity, which may improve your symptoms. You’ll know by the way you feel, but often we can also see evidence of more balanced brain activity with follow up EEGs.

Although we cannot guarantee success, we can usually make a determination within two weeks of starting PrTMS whether you are realizing a benefit.  If not, we will recommend discontinuing PrTMS. To learn more about how PrTMS may help you, call MindSet or connect with us online.

PrTMS is a method of developing and using personalized repetitive plans for rTMS therapy.  It is not a product, and is not FDA approved.