Does this also imply the possibility of the inverse, magnetically making people depressed?
How happy would you choose be if you could consciously decide how happy to be?
I'm willing to trust, perhaps naively, that everyone is getting the same Prozac tablets. But how does the skill of the practitioner and maintenance of their magnetic treatment device affect outcomes? It's almost like a surgery, but I'm not sure who's actually been trained to perform it.
Which isn't to say someone shouldn't do it, just my own feelings based on limited understanding. Perhaps if I knew more I would have greater faith.
It's also of note that the treatment takes place over multiple days and there's multiple sessions in a day. During that time, patients are continuously evaluated. This trial was also only used on patients with treatment-resistant depression (i.e. have tried many different medications and forms of therapy, some included ECT) and were screened as such. From my understanding, the treatment was explored as a "last resort" for those that could find no other medical relief, but this obviously has further implications.
The FDA approved treatment is "aim at the middle of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex". Getting more activity and connectedness improves its regulation of overall emotional activity.
This research implies that aiming instead slightly differently and a different dosing regimen may be more effective.
This is no different from any other medical treatment, where we find refinements in how and where to apply basically the same treatment to get better results.
To get some perspective on iterations of treatment, read this account of the work of August Bier.
He pioneered spinal anesthesia, something used all of the time today for epidurals during childbirth.
His experimental treatments he both performed and had performed on him by his assistant will, at the very least, raise your eyebrows.
Then again, the stuff shows benefits in trial, and presumably we get most practitioners trained up and doing the thing that's the standard of care well enough...
But in practice people just take two 500mg tablets and call it a day. Works well enough most of the time, even though it might be 'wrong' in some platonic sense of the word. (Eg you might have been helped enough with a slightly lower dose. Or perhaps 1250mg would have been better and suppressed slightly more of the pain. Who knows?)
I'm just not sure what the margin for error is, the failure modes for this magnetic therapy, or what makes a good magnetic therapist.
Not a reason to stop developing it though.
That’s what gives me pause.