What’s it like to live with deep brain stimulation for depression?
Learning to live with the treatment comes with physical and emotional challenges
Electricity Saved My Brain
This is the fourth part in a series on deep brain stimulation for depression. Read from the beginning.
[Content note: This story contains discussion of suicide.]
“The only thing I’ll slightly complain about — and it’s very vain — I only wish the batteries in your chest didn’t show up so much,” says Patient 001.
There is an intense physicality to deep brain stimulation for depression. Participants have two slight bumps on their head, wires under the skin of their neck and a battery-powered control unit implanted under the skin in their chest.