Explore the Data

PATIENTS

1,050 patients living with depression currently from across U.S. interviewed.

SCALE FROM O TO 7 ABI DBS ECT rTMS AFFECT 3.66 3.63 3.54 4.16 INVASIVENESS 3.67 3.71 3.55 3.39 INFLUENCE TO SELF 4.88 4.73 4.47 4.82 RISK 3.44 3.46 3.40 2.97 BENEFIT 4.27 4.24 3.94 4.33

“I do worry about socioeconomic status, and race, and ethnicity all could play into that. Where you would offer more options to someone who had a larger bank account.”
(Patient 7)

CAREGIVERS

1,026 Caregivers of someone living with depression currently from across U.S. interviewed.

SCALE FROM O TO 7 ABI DBS ECT rTMS AFFECT 3.61 3.83 3.85 4.26 INVASIVENESS 3.81 3.82 3.57 3.55 INFLUENCE TO SELF 4.68 4.78 4.66 4.82 RISK 3.57 3.46 3.33 3.10 BENEFIT 4.20 4.21 4.23 4.33

83% of the General Public “Limited Evidence of Treatment’s Safety” was their #1 ethics concern for all 4 interventions.

GENERAL PUBLIC

1,025 members of the general public from across U.S. interviewed.

SCALE FROM O TO 7 ABI DBS ECT rTMS AFFECT 3.46 3.53 3.52 4.00 INVASIVENESS 3.63 3.60 3.50 3.35 INFLUENCE TO SELF 4.58 4.54 4.39 4.64 RISK 3.42 3.34 3.29 2.87 BENEFIT 4.09 4.03 3.92 4.06

86% of the General Public “Limited Evidence of Treatment’s Safety” was their #1 ethics concern for all 4 interventions.

“Brain surgery is always a big risk. Risk that you are undergoing the surgery and then it doesn’t actually help, which is a big, big emotional and financial burden.”
(Public 7)

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

“It still feels like potentially a harmful thing.... and primitive. Even though I do believe [ECT] is safer than it used to be.”
(Public 6)

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS)

“I mean TMS is invasive because of the frequency of treatment. That’s the problem. ECT, I think, it’s more involved in terms of you need short-term anesthesia, there’s more cognitive problems involved, etc. You don’t have that with TMS. So ECT is more invasive from that standpoint ... but I think TMS is in some ways more invasive in terms of the scheduling requirement.”
(Psychiatrist 11)

“Having to make multiple trips to a doctor’s office on an ongoing basis, that would probably be a pretty big barrier for a lot of people. You know, they would not be willing to do it. They might not be able to do it.”
(Patient 10)

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS)

“[O]ne of the bigger benefits [. . .] is that it’s not a pill that you have to take every day and remember to take.”
(Patient 8)

“I think they’re like invasive in different senses, although I think that medically and physically DBS is more invasive. But it doesn’t really go into a patient’s personal thoughts or inner self, so I think in that sense it’s less invasive than psychotherapy.”
(Public 2)

Adaptive Brain Implants (ABI)

“I just don’t like the idea of something like that being put in my brain. It’s just sci-fi kind of scary.”
(Patient 7)

“I think an adaptive implant would be welcome and would be well worth the risk because, it is intelligently responding to some actual neural activity.”
(Psychiatrist 10)