Reacción a "Home brain stimulation device improves symptoms of depression, clinical trial finds"

This is a study on a treatment with transcranial magnetic stimulation applied at home, which compares this treatment with a stimulation simulated as a placebo. Using the Hamilton depression scale, commonly used in studies of this type, they find that the improvement with the treatment is about 9 points and with the placebo about 7. Although this difference reaches statistical significance, I do not consider it to have any clinical relevance. There are studies that assess that a difference of 2 points on the Hamilton scale is not appreciable in a clinical interview, i.e. it has no relevance for the patient.

Side effects are few and mild, but greater in the treatment group, which should also be taken into account.

Again, as is sadly often the case, there is no comparison with other active treatment, which would be useful for clinicians in assessing the relevance of this treatment.

In this era of global emphasis on mental health, many new treatments are appearing (with their economic interests behind them, obviously), but this one does not seem to present, with the study data in hand, any advances in the treatment of depression.