Long feared, avoided, and all but written off as outmoded once effective pharmacotherapy for serious mental disorders was available, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in recent years has re-emerged as the safe and effective “gold standard” treatment of severe mood disorders. In particular, advances in treatment administration have enhanced the benefit:risk ratio of ECT well beyond that of its original form in Italy 80 years ago. Over the past two decades ECT has been joined by a growing list of other noninvasive and surgical approaches to brain stimulation interventions, chiefly for medication-resistant depression. Magnetic stimulation offers the promise of more precise targeting of specific brain areas than ECT, and with daily nonconvulsive administration, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has won FDA clearance for depression and, just this summer, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) unresponsive to medication.

Most recently, Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), a neurosurgical approach approved for Parkinson’s Disease, offers the promise of precise localization of brain stimulation; ongoing studies of DBS are most promising in resistant OCD. Speakers at this half-day workshop will review recent developments and current status of the range of approved and experimental noninvasive and invasive brain stimulation approaches in psychiatry, including the latest findings on combined interventions, optimizing precise targeting of stimulation, and ongoing clinical trials in the DC area.

Read the flyer with information on speakers, rates and more.