Deep Brain Stimulation, with Dr. Mahendra Bhati

What Makes Up Your Mind by the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine

Episode notes

Our topic on this episode of What Makes Up Your Mind takes us deep into the human brain where stimulation treatments show great promise for relieving psychiatric illnesses. Already used to treat neural conditions affecting motor skills like epilepsy and movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) has also been beneficial in the treatment of severe Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and is being tested for treatment-resistant severe depression.

In our podcast, you’ll hear Dr. Bhati give an in-depth description of the DBS procedure itself, the results he’s seen, and his process for evaluating candidates for the procedure. He explains the criteria for using DBS to treat OCD is severe treatment resistance, while using DBS for severe treatment-resistant depression is currently only available through a research s ... 

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