Last Updated on April 20, 2020
Some of you may know how life with a depressive person looks like. All of us have our ups and downs, and we can tell that we experienced days when nothing seems worth moving us out of bed, or out of house, or out of ourselves, out of the depression that surrounds us from everywhere. Did it occur to you to think that everything is pointless, that life has no meaning at all, and that all values you respected and believed in are no more than empty words?
Well, there are people who experience such thoughts and feelings every single day of their life. While for some of them, antidepressant medication and psychoterapy are a real help in getting them back to the joy of living, for others nothing seems to help, not even electric shock treatments. There are millions of people suffering from this treatment-resistant depression. For them there is now a new hope raised by the results of a medical experiment done in Canada. It involves brain surgery: two electrodes are implanted in a region of the brain called Area 25, which seems to be connected with other areas in our brains that control sleep or appetite. After implant, whenever the depression feelings are present, the area is stimulated with the help of a peacemaker, bringing the patients back to normal.
The experiment was done on a small group of patients who had no other hope to get well.
You can watch the whole story and the patients’ testimonials on Yahoo News.
The progress in medicine over the past decade is impressive. I wonder how far away is the day when we will get up in the morning, asking ourselves “Well, how do I want to feel today” and press a small button, ordering a bunch of inspiring feelings in the same way we order now a glass of water?
