Medical Startup To Begin Testing At-Home Brain Zapping Devices (ieee.org)

"A doctor's prescription for clinical depression could one day sound like this: In the comfort of your own home, slip on a brain-zapping headband a few times per week," reports IEEE Spectrum. Slashdot reader the_newsbeagle writes: This isn't old-school brain zapping: It's not electroshock therapy... While "transcranial direct current stimulation" is being investigated as a treatment for all sorts of neuropsychiatric disorders, many researchers and doctors think depression may be the killer app. A South Korean company called Ybrain thinks its consumer-friendly headband for depression will be the product that makes this treatment mainstream...
Ybrain plans to test the device on thousands of depression patients in 70 hospitals in Korea, according to the article, then "use data from all those patients to build a case for approval in Europe...and then in the U.S." The company's founder and CEO believes that after the FDA approves the first brain-zapping device, "it will be seen as a mainstream treatment."

Comments

[Discussing how Knight didn't come in to the lab]

[thinkwaitfast]

Bodie: He said he didn't feel like it. And I said, "You'd better!" And he said, "Or what?" And I said, "Or you're gonna be in trouble." And he said, "Jam it."

Professor Hathaway: That's a wonderful story, Bodie. I noticed you've stopped stuttering.

Bodie: I've been giving myself shock treatments.

Professor Hathaway: Up the voltage.

Re:Radium Water

[Bite The Pillow]

Except that there is a mounting body of published, peer reviewed science that says this works. Dubious? Try your own advice and look it up.

It's not 100% effective, but it is better than placebo in everything I've read. Which is better than our current arsenal of pills.

Also effective, a single dose of LSD.

Re:And when people start hacking these devices?

[senileoldfart]

Don't us a pair of quarters as electrodes, and don't ask how I know this.

Re:Radium Water

[PrimaryConsult]

Except the best one (Diazepam aka Valium) is super controlled. You cease to give a shit about anything bad, and enjoy anything good, for quite a few hours. It's a spot solution that can turn a mood around that doesn't require regular dosage. The ones they like to prescribe instead (SSRIs) require regular dosage, have intense withdrawl symptoms, and at higher doses have a troubling mental side effect: you no longer 'love' anyone or anything, and even those who notice this will find they are not troubled by it.